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HOLLAND   AND   SCANDINAVIA 


SKETCHES 


IN 


Holland  and  Scandinavia 


BY 
AUGUSTUS   J.  C.  HARE 

/  t 
Author  of  "Walks  in  Rome,"  "Walks  in  London,"  "Cities  of  Italy," 

w  Walks  in  Paris,"  Etc. 


PHILADELPHIA 
DAVID     MCKAY,    PUBLISHER 

1022  market  Street 


H3 


€ 


c 


PREFACE. 

The  slight  sketches   in  this  volume    are    only  the 

result    of    ordinary   tours     in     the    countries     they 

attempt  to  describe.     Yet  the  days  they  recall  were 

so  delightful,  and   their  memory — especially  of  the 

tour    in  Norway — is  so  indescribably  sunny,  that  I 

cannot  help  hoping  their  publication  may  lead  others 

to  enjoy  what  is  at  once  so  pleasant  and  so  easy  of 

attainment. 

Augustus  J.  C.  Hare. 

Holmhurst  :  November  1S84. 


216962 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

IN    HOLLAND •        I 


IN   DENMARK         ........  59 


IN   SWEDEN 83 


IN   NORWAY 105 


HOLLAND 


IN  HOLLAND, 

A  T  Roosendal,  about  an  hour's  railway  journey 
**  from  Antwerp,  the  boundary  between  Belgium 
and  Holland  is  crossed,  and  a  branch  line  diverges 
to  Breda. 

Somehow,  like  most  travellers,  we  could  not  help 
expecting  to  see  some  marked  change  on  reaching  a 
new  country,  and  in  Holland  one  could  not  repress  the 
expectation  of  beginning  at  once  to  see  the  pictures 
of  Teniers  and  Gerard  Dou  in  real  life.  We  were 
certainly  disappointed  at  first.  Open  heaths  were 
succeeded  by  woods  of  stunted  firs,  and  then  by  fields 
with  thick  hedges  of  beech  or  alder,  till  the  towers  of 
Breda  carne  in  sight.  Here  a  commonplace  omnibus 
took  us  to  the  comfortable  inn  of  Zum  Kroon,  and 
we  were  shown  into  bedrooms  reached  by  an  open 
wooden  staircase  from  the  courtyard,  and  quickly  join- 
ed the  table  d'hote,  at  which  the  magnates  of  the  town 
were  seated  with  napkins  well  tucked  up  under  their 
chins,  talking,  with  full  mouths,  in  Dutch,  of  which  to 


4  IN  HOLLAND, 

our  unaccustomed  ears  the  words  seemed  all  in  one 
string.  Most  excellent  was  the  dinner — roast  meat 
and  pears,  quantities  of  delicious  vegetables  cooked 
in  different  ways,  piles  of  ripe  mulberries  and  cake, 
and  across  the  little  garden,  with  its  statues  and 
bright  flower-beds,  we  could  see  the  red  sails  of  the 
barges  going  up  and  down  the  canals. 

As  soon  as  dinner  was  over,  we  sallied  forth  to  see 
the  town,  which  impressed  us  more  than  any  Dutch 
city  did  afterwards,  perhaps  because  it  was  the  first 
we  saw.  The  winding  streets — one  of  them  ending  in 
a  high  windmill — are  lined  with  houses  wonderfully 
varied  in  outline,  and  of  every  shade  of  delicate 
colour,  yellow,  grey,  or  brown,  though  the  windows 
always  have  white  frames  and  bars.  Passing  through 
a  low  archway  under  one  of  the  houses,  we  found 
ourselves,  when  we  least  expected  it,  in  the  public 
garden,  a  kind  of  wood  where  the  trees  have  killed  all 
the  grass,  surrounded  by  canals,  beyond  one  of  which 
is  a  great  square  chateau  built  by  William  III.  of 
England,  encircled  by  the  Merk,  and  enclosing  an 
arcaded  court.  There  was  an  older  chateau  of  1350 
at  Breda,  but  we  failed  to  find  it. 

In  stately  splendour,  from  the  old  houses  of  the 
market-place,  rises  the  noble  Hervormde  Kerk 
(Protestant  Church),  with  a  lofty  octagon  tower,  and 


BREDA.  5 

a  most  characteristic  bulbous  Dutch  spire.  Here,  as 
we  wanted  to  see  the  interior,  we  first  were  puzzled 
by  our  ignorance  of  Dutch,  finding,  as  everywhere  in 
the  smaller  towns,  that  the  natives  knew  no  language 
but  their  own.  But  two  old  women  in  high  caps  and 
gold  earrings  observed  our  puzzledom  from  a  window 


THE    MARKET-PLACE    AT    BREDA. 


and  pointed  to  a  man  and  a  key — we  nodded  ;  the 
man  pointed  to  himself,  a  door,  and  a  key — we 
nodded  ;  and  we  were  soon  inside  the  building.  It 
was  our  first  introduction  to  Dutch  Calvinism  and 
iconoclasm,  and  piteous  indeed  was  it  to  see  so 
magnificent  a  church  thickly  covered  with  whitewash, 


6  IN  HOLLAND, 

and  the  quantity  of  statues  which  it  contains  of 
deceased  Dukes  and  Duchesses  of  Nassau  bereft  of 
their  legs  and  petticoats.  Only,  in  a  grand  side 
chapel  on  the  left  of  the  choir,  the  noble  tomb 
of  Engelbrecht  II.  of  Nassau,  general  under  the 
Emperor  Maximilian  (1505),  remains  intact.  The 
guide  lights  matches  to  shine  through  the  transparent 
alabaster  of  the  figures ;  that  of  the  Duke  represents 
Death,  that  of  the  Duchess  Sleep,  as  they  lie  beneath 
a  stone  slab  which  bears  the  armour  of  Engelbrecht, 
and  is  supported  by  figures  of  Caesar,  Hannibal, 
Regulus,  and  Philip  of  Macedon  ;  that  of  Caesar  is 
sublime.  The  tomb  of  Sir  Francis  Vere  in  West- 
minster Abbey  is  of  the  same  design,  and  is  supposed 
to  be  copied  from  this  famous  monument.  Outside 
the  chapel  is  the  tomb  of  Engelbrecht  V.  of  Nassau, 
with  all  his  family  kneeling,  in  quaint  headdresses. 
The  other  sights  of  the  church  are  the  brass  font  in 
the  Baptistery,  and  a  noble  brass  in  the  choir  of 
William  de  Gaellen,  Dean  of  the  Chapter,  1539.  It 
will  be  observed  that  here,  and  almost  everywhere  else 
in  Holland,  the  names  of  saints  which  used  to  be 
attached  to  the  churches  have  disappeared  ;  the 
buildings  are  generally  known  as  the  old  church,  or 
new  church,  or  great  church. 

After   a   delicious  breakfast  of  coffee  and  thick 


ZEALAND.  7 

cream,  with  rusks,  scones,  and  different  kinds  of 
cheese,  always  an  indispensable  in  Dutch  breakfasts, 
we  took  to  the  railway  again  and  crossed  Zealand, 
which  chiefly  consists  of  four  islands,  Noordt  Beve- 
land,  Zuid  Beveland,  Schouwen,  and  Walcheren,  and 
is  less  visited  by  the  rest  of  the  Netherlander  than 
any  other  part  of  the  country.  The  land  is  all  cut 
up  into  vast  polders,  as  the  huge  meadows  are  called, 
which  are  recovered  from  the  sea  and  protected  by 
embankments.  Here,  if  human  care  was  withdrawn 
for  six  months,  the  whole  country  would  be  under 
the  sea  again.  A  corps  of  engineers  called  '  water- 
staat'  are  continually  employed  to  watch  the  waters, 
and  to  keep  in  constant  repair  the  dykes,  which  are 
formed  of  clay  at  the  bottom,  as  that  is  more  water- 
proof than  anything  else,  and  thatched  with  willows, 
which  are  here  grown  extensively  for  the  purpose. 
If  the  sea  passes  a  dyke,  ruin  is  imminent,  an  alarm 
bell  rings,  and  the  whole  population  rush  to  the 
rescue.  The  moment  one  dyke  is  even  menaced,  the 
people  begin  to  build  another  inside  it,  and  then  rely 
upon  the  double  defence,  whilst  they  fortify  the  old 
one.  But  all  their  care  has  not  preserved  the  islands 
of  Zealand.  Three  centuries  ago,  Schouwen  was 
entirely  submerged,  and  every  living  creature  was 
drowned'     Sc^n  aite**    Noordt  Beveland   was   sub- 


8 


IN  HOLLAND. 


merged,  and  remained  for  several  years  entirely  under 
water,  only  the  points  of  the  church  spires  being 
visible.  Zuid  Beveland  had  been  submerged  in  the 
fourteenth  century.  Walcheren  was  submerged  as 
late  as  1808,  and  Tholen  even  in  1825.  It  has  been 
aptly  asserted   that  the  sea   to   the  inhabitants   of 


'■s»es£C^» 


BERGEN-OP-ZOOM. 


Holland  is  what  Vesuvius  is  to  Torre  del  Greco.  How 
well  its  French  name  of  Pays-Bas  suits  the  country  ! 
De  Amicis  says  that  the  Dutch  have  three  enemies — 
the  sea,  the  lakes,  and  the  rivers ;  they  repel  the  sea, 
they  dry  the  lakes,  and  they  imprison  the  rivers  ;  but 
with  the  sea  it  is  a  combat  which  never  ceases. 


BERGEN  OP-ZOOM,    GOES.  9 

The  story  of  the  famous  siege  of  1749  made  us 
linger  at  Bergen-op-Zoom,  a  clean,  dull  little  town 
with  bright  white  houses  surrounding  an  irregular 
market-place,  and  surmounted  by  the  heavy  tower  of 
the  Church  of  S.  Gertrude.  In  the  Stadhuis  is  a  fine 
carved  stone  chimney-piece ;  but  there  is  little  worth 
seeing,  and  we  were  soon  speeding  across  the  rich 
pastures  of  Zuid  Beveland,  and  passing  its  capital  of 
Goes,  prettily  situated  amongst  cherry  orchards,  the 
beautiful  cruciform  church  with  a  low  central  spire 
rising  above  the  trees  on  its  ramparts.  Every  now 
and  then  the  train  seems  scarcely  out  of  the  water, 
which  covers  a  vast  surface  of  the  pink-green  flats, 
and  recalls  the  description  in  Hudibras  of — 

A  country  that  draws  fifty  feet  of  water, 
In  which  men  live  as  in  the  hold  of  nature, 
And  when  the  sea  does  in  upon  them  break, 
And  drown  a  province,  does  but  spring  a  leak. 

The  peasant  women  at  the  stations  are  a  perpetual 
amusement,  for  there  is  far  more  costume  here  than  in 
most  parts  of  Holland,  and  peculiar  square  handsome 
gold  ornaments,  something  like  closed  golden  books, 
are  universally  worn  on  each  side  of  the  face. 

So,  crossing  a  broad  salt  canal  into  the  island  of 
Walcheren,  we  reached  Middleburg,  a  handsome  town 
which  was  covered  with  water  to  the  house  tops  when 


io  IN  HOLLAND, 

the  island  was  submerged.  It  was  the  birthplace  of 
Zach  Janssen  and  Hans  Lipperhey,  the  inventors  of 
the  telescope,  c.  1610.  In  the  market-place  is  a  most 
beautiful  Gothic  townhall,  built  by  the  architect 
Keldermans,  early  in  the  sixteenth  century.  We 
asked  a  well-dressed  boy  how  we  could  get  into  it, 
and  he,  without  further  troubling  himself,  pointed  the 
way  with  his  finger.  The  building  contains  a  quaint 
old  hall  called  the  Vierschaar,  and  a  so-called  museum, 
but  there  is  little  enough  to  see.  As  we  came  out 
the  boy  met  us.  '  You  must  give  me  something : 
I  pointed  out  the  entrance  of  the  Stadhuis  to  you/ 
In  Holland  we  have  always  found  that  no  one,  rich 
or  poor,  does  a  kindness  or  even  a  civility  for 
nothing ! 

The  crowd  in  the  market-place  was  so  great  that 
it  was  impossible  to  sketch  the  Stadhuis  as  we  should 
have  wished,  but  the  people  themselves  were  delight- 
fully picturesque.  The  women  entirely  conceal  their 
hair  under  their  white  caps,  but  have  golden  cork- 
screws sticking  out  on  either  side  the  face,  like  weap- 
ons of  defence,  from  which  the  golden  slabs  we  have 
observed  before  were  pendent.  The  Nieuwe  Kerk  is 
of  little  interest,  though  it  contains  the  tomb  of  Will- 
iam of  Holland,  who  was  elected  Emperor  of  Germany 
in  1250,  and  we  wandered  on  through  the  quiet  streets, 


DORTRECHT,  11 

till  a  Gothic  arch  in  an  ancient  wall  looked  tempting. 
Passing  through  it  we  found  ourselves  in  the  enclosure 
of  the  old  abbey,  shaded  by  a  grove  of  trees,  and 
surrounded  by  ancient  buildings,  part  of  which  are 
appropriated  as  the  Hotel  Abdij,  where  we  arrived 
utterly  famished,  and  found  a  table  d'hote  at  2.30  P.M. 
unspeakably  reviving. 

Any  one  who  sees  Holland  thoroughly  ought  also 
to  visit  Zieriksee,  the  capital  of  the  island  of  Schou- 
wen  ;  but  the  water  locomotion  thither  is  so  difficult 
and  tedious  that  we  preferred  keeping  to  the  railways, 
which  took  us  back  in  the  dark  over  the  country  we 
had  already  traversed,  and  a  little  more,  to  Dortrecht, 
where  there  is  a  convenient  tramway  to  take  travellers 
from  the  station  into  the  town.  Here,  at  the  Hotel 
de  Fries,  we  found  comfortable  bedrooms,  with  board- 
ed floors  and  box-beds  like  those  jn  Northumbrian  cot- 
tages, and  we  had  supper  in  the  public  room,  separated 
into  two  parts  by  a  dais  for  strangers,  whence  we 
looked  down  into  the  humbler  division,  which  recalled 
many  homely  scenes  of  Ostade  and  Teniers  in  its 
painted  wooden  ceiling,  its  bright  polished  furniture, 
its  cat  and  dog  and  quantity  of  birds  and  flowers,  its 
groups  of  boors  at  round  tables  drinking  out  of 
tankards,  and  the  landlady  and  her  daughter  in  their 
gleaming  gold  ornaments,  sitting  knitting,  with  the 


12  IN  HOLLAND. 

waiter  standing  behind  them  amusing  himself  by  the 
general  conversation. 

Our  morning  at  Dortrecht  was  very  delightful,  and 
it  is  a  thoroughly  charming  place.  Passing  under  a 
dark  archway  in  a  picturesque  building  of  Charles  V. 
opposite  the  hotel,  we  found  ourselves  at  once  on  the 
edge  of  an  immense  expanse  of  shimmering  river, 
with  long  rich  polders  beyond,  between  which  the 
wide  flood  breaks  into  three  different  branches.  Red 
and  white  sails  flit  down  them.  Here  and  there  rise 
a  line  of  pollard  willows  or  clipped  elms,  and  now  and 
then  a  church-spire.  On  the  nearest  shore  an  ancient 
windmill,  coloured  in  delicate  tints  of  grey  and  yellow, 
surmounts  a  group  of  white  buildings.  On  the  left  is 
a  broad  esplanade  of  brick,  lined  with  ancient  houses, 
and  a  canal  with  a  bridge,  the  long  arms  of  which  are 
ready  to  open  at  a  touch  and  give  a  passage  to  the 
great  yellow-masted  barges,  which  are  already  half 
intercepting  the  bright  red  house-fronts  ornamented 
with  stone,  which  belong  to  some  public  buildings 
facing  the  end  of  the  canal.  With  what  a  confusion 
of  merchandise  are  the  boats  laden,  and  how  gay  is 
the  colouring,  between  the  old  weedy  posts  to  which 
they  are  moored  ! 

It  was  from  hence  that  Isabella  of  France,  with 
Sir  John  de  Hainault  and  many  other  faithful  knights, 


DORTRECHT.  13 

set  out  on  their  expedition  against  Edward  II.  and 
the  government  of  the  Spencers. 

From  the  busy  port,  where  nevertheless  they  are 
dredging,  we  cross  another  bridge  and  find  ourselves 
in  a  quietude  like  that  of  a  cathedral  close  in  England. 
On  one  side  is  a  wide  pool  half  covered  with  floating 
timber,  and,  in  the  other  half,  reflecting  like  a  mirror 
the  houses  on  the  opposite  shore,  with  their  bright 
gardens  of  lilies  and  hollyhocks,  and  trees  of  mountain 
ash,  which  bend  their  masses  of  scarlet  berries  to  the 
still  water.  Between  the  houses  are  glints  of  blue 
river  and  of  inevitable  windmills  on  the  opposite  shore. 
And  all  this  we  observe  standing  in  the  shadow 
of  a  huge  church,  the  Groote  Kerk,  with  a  nave 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  a  choir  of  the  fifteenth, 
and  a  gigantic  brick  tower,  in  which  three  long  Gothic 
arches,  between  octagonal  tourelles,  enclose  several 
tiers  of  windows.  At  the  top  is  a  great  clock,  and 
below  the  church  a  grove  of  elms,  through  which 
fitful  sunlight  falls  on  the  grass  and  the  dead  red  of 
the  brick  pavement  (so  grateful  to  feet  sore  with  the 
sharp  stones  of  other  Dutch  cities),  where  groups  of 
fishermen  are  collecting  in  their  blue  shirts  and  white 
trousers. 

There  is  little  to  see  inside  this  or  any  other 
church  in  Holland  ;  travellers  will  rather  seek  for  the 


14 


IN  HOLLAND. 


memorials,  at  the  Kloveniers  Doelen,  of  the  famous 
Synod  of  Dort,  which  was  held  1618-19,  in  the  hope 
of  effecting  a  compromise  between  the  Gomarists,  or 
disciples  of  Calvin,  and  the  Arminians  who  followed 
Zwingli,  and  who  had  recently  obtained  the  name  of 


W^k-M: 


GROOTE   KERK,   DORTRECHT. 

Remonstants  from  the  '  remonstrance '  which  they 
had  addressed  eight  years  before  in  defence  of  their 
doctrines.  The  Calvinists  held  that  the  greater  part 
of   mankind    was  excluded    from   grace,   which    the 


DORTRECHT. 


*5 


Arminians  denied  ;  but  at  the  Synod  of  Dort  the 
Calvinists  proclaimed  themselves  as  infallible  as  the 
Pope,  and  their  resolutions  became  the  law  of  the 
Dutch  Reformed  Church.  The  Arminians  were  forth- 
with outlawed  ;  a  hundred  ministers  who  refused  to 
subscribe  to  the  dictates  of  the  Synod  were  banished  ; 


CANAL     AT     DORTRECHT. 


Hugo  Grotius  and  Rombout  Hoogerbeets  were  im- 
prisoned for  life  at  Loevestein ;  the  body  of  the 
secretary  Ledenberg,who  committed  suicide  in  prison, 
was  hung ;  and  Van  Olden  Barneveldt,  the  friend  of 
William  the  Silent,  was  beheaded  in  his  seventy- 
second  year. 


1 6  IN  HOLLAND. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  quiet  streets  of  Dortrecht 
to  remind  one  that  it  was  once  one  of  the  most 
important  commercial  cities  of  Holland,  taking 
precedence  even  of  Rotterdam,  Delft,  Leyden,  and 
Amsterdam.  It  also  possessed  a  privilege  called  the 
Staple  of  Dort,  by  which  all  the  carriers  on  the  Maas 
and  Rhine  were  forced  to  unload  their  merchandise 
here,  and  pay  all  duties  imposed,  only  using  the  boats 
or  porters  of  the  place  in  their  work,  and  so  bringing 
a  great  revenue  to  the  town. 

More  than  those  in  any  of  the  other  towns  of 
Holland  do  the  little  water  streets  of  Dortrecht  recall 
Venice,  the  houses  rising  abruptly  from  the  canals  ; 
only  the  luminous  atmosphere  and  the  shimmering 
water  changing  colour  like  a  chameleon,  are  wanting. 

Through  the  street  of  wine — Wijnstraat — built 
over  storehouses  used  for  the  staple,  we  went  to 
the  Museum  to  see  the  pictures.  There  were  two 
schools  of  Dortrecht.  Jacob  Geritse  Cuyp  (1575), 
Albert  Cuyp  (1605),  Ferdinand  Bol  (161 1),  Nicolas 
Maas  (1632),  and  Schalken  (1643)  belonged  to  the 
former ;  Arend  de  Gelder,  Arnold  Houbraken,  Dirk 
Stoop,  and  Ary  Scheffer  are  of  the  latter.  Sunshine 
and  glow  were  the  characteristics  of  the  first  school, 
greyness  and  sobriety  of  the  second.  But  there  are 
few  good  pictures  at  Dort  now,  and  some  of  the  best 


ROTTERDAM.  17 

works  of  Cuyp  are  to  be  found  in  our  National 
Gallery,  executed  at  his  native  place  and  portraying 
the  great  brick  tower  of  the  church  in  the  golden 
haze  of  evening,  seen  across  rich  pastures,  where  the 
cows  are  lying  deep  in  the  meadow  grass.  The  works 
of  Ary  Scheffer  are  now  the  most  interesting  pictures 
in  the  Dortrecht  Gallery.  Of  the  subject  '  Christus 
Consolator'  there  are  two  representations.  In  the 
more  striking  of  these  the  pale  Christ  is  seated 
amongst  the  sick,  sorrowful,  blind,  maimed,  and  en- 
slaved, who  are  all  stretching  out  their  hands  to  Him. 
Beneath  is  the  tomb  which  the  artist  executed  for  his 
mother,  Cornelia  Scheffer,  whose  touching  figure  is 
represented  lying  with  outstretched  hands,  in  the 
utmost  abandonment  of  repose. 

An  excursion  should  be  made  from  Dortrecht  to 
the  castle  of  Loevestein  on  the  Rhine,  where  Grotius, 
imprisoned  in  1619,  was  concealed  by  his  wife  in  the 
chest  which  brought  in  his  books  and  linen.  It  was 
conveyed  safely  out  of  the  castle  by  her  courageous 
maid  Elsje  van  Houwening,  and  was  taken  at  first  to 
the  house  of  Jacob  Daatselaer,  a  supposed  friend  of 
Grotius,  who  refused  to  render  any  assistance.  But 
his  wife  consented  to  open  the  chest,  and  the  philo- 
sopher, disguised  as  a  mason,  escaped  to  Brabant. 

It  is  much  best  to  visit  Rotterdam  as  an  excursion 


18  IN  HOLLAND. 

from  Dortrecht.  We  thought  it  the  most  odious 
place  we  ever  were  in — immense,  filthy,  and  not  very 
picturesque.  Its  handsomest  feature  is  the  vast  quay 
called  the  Boompjes,  on  the  Maas.  Here  and  there  a 
great  windmill  reminds  you  unmistakably  of  where 
you  are,  and  the  land  streets  are  intersected  every- 
where by  water  streets,  the  carriages  being  constantly 
stopped  to  let  ships  pass  through  the  bridges.  In  the 
Groote  Markt  stands  a  bronze  statue  of  Desiderius 
Erasmus — ■  Vir  saeculi  sui  primarius,  et  civis  omnium 
praestantissimus,'  which  is  the  work  of  Hendrik  de 
Keyser  (1662),  and  in  the  Wijde  Kerkstraat  is  the 
house  where  he  was  born,  inscribed  '  Haec  est  parva 
domus,  magnus  qua  natus  Erasmus,  1467,'  but  it  is 
now  a  tavern.  The  great  church  of  S.  Lawrence — 
Groote  Kerk — built  in  1477-87,  contains  the  tombs  of 
a  number  of  Dutch  admirals,  and  has  a  grand  pave- 
ment of  monumental  slabs,  but  is  otherwise  frightful. 
The  portion  used  for  service  is  said  to  be  '  so  con- 
veniently constructed  that  the  zealous  Christians  of 
Rotterdam  prefer  sleeping  through  a  sermon  there, 
to  any  other  church  in  the  city.'  Part  of  the  rest  is 
used  as  a  cart-house,  the  largest  chapel  is  a  commo- 
dious carpenter's  shop,  and  the  aisles  round  the  part 
which  is  still  a  church,  where  there  has  been  an 
attempt  at  restoration  in  painting  the  roof  yellow  and 


GOUDA.  19 

putting  up  some  hideous  yellow  seats, are  a  playground 
for  the  children  of  the  town,  who  are  freely  admitted 
in  their  perambulators,  though  for  strangers  there  is  a 
separate  fee  for  each  part  of  the  edifice  they  enter. 

We  went  to  see  the  pictures  in  the  museum  be- 
queathed to  the  town  by  Jacob  Otto  Boyman,  but  did 
not  admire  them  much.  It  takes  time  to  accustom 
one's  mind  to  Dutch  art,  and  the  endless  representa- 
tions of  family  life,  with  domestic  furniture,  pots  and 
pans,  &c,  or  of  the  simple  local  landscapes — clipped 
avenues,  sandy  roads,  dykes,  and  cottages,  or  even  of 
the  cows,  and  pigs,  and  poultry,  which  seem  wonder- 
fully executed,  but,  where  one  has  too  much  of  the 
originals,  scarcely  worth  the  immense  amount  of  time 
and  labour  bestowed  upon  them.  The  calm  seas  of 
Van  de  Welde  and  Van  der  Capelle  only  afford  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  relief.  The  scenes  of  village  life  are 
seldom  pleasing,  often  coarse,  and  never  have  anything 
elevating  to  offer  or  ennobling  to  recall.  We  thought 
that  the  real  charm  of  the  Dutch  school  to  outsiders 
consists  in  the  immense  power  and  variety  of  its 
portraits. 

Hating  Rotterdam,  we  thankfully  felt  ouj  selves 
speeding  over  the  flat,  rich  lands  to  Gouda,  where 
we  found  an  agricultural  fete  going  on,  banners 
half  way  down  the  houses,  and  a  triumphal  arch  as 


20  IN  HOLLAND. 

the  entrance  to  the  square,  formed  of  spades,  rakes, 
and  forks,  with  a  plough  at  the  top,  and  decorated 
with  corn,  potatoes,  turnips,  and  carrots,  and  cornu- 
copias pouring  out  flowers  at  the  sides.  In  the 
square — a  great  cheese  market,  for  the  Gouda  cheese 
is  esteemed  the  best  in  Holland — is  a  Gothic  Stadhuis, 
and  beyond  it,  the  Groote  Kerk  of  1552,  of  which 
the  bare  interior  is  enlivened  by  the  stained  windows 
executed  by  Wonter  and  Dirk  Crabeth  in  1555-57. 
We  were  the  better  able  to  understand  the  design  of 
these  noble  windows  because  the  cartoon  for  each 
was  spread  upon  the  pavement  in  front  of  it ;  but  one 
could  not  help  one's  attention  being  unpleasantly  dis- 
tracted by  the  number  of  men  of  the  burgher  class, 
smoking  and  with  their  hats  on,  who  were  allowed  to 
use  the  church  as  a  promenade.  Gouda  also  made  an 
unpleasant  impression  upon  us,  because,  expensive 
as  we  found  every  hotel  in  Holland,  we  were  no- 
where so  outrageously  cheated  as  here. 

It  is  a  brief  journey  to  the  Hague — La  Haye, 
Gravenhage — most  delightful  of  little  capitals,  with  its 
comfortable  hotels  and  pleasant  surroundings.  The 
town  is  still  so  small  that  it  seems  to  merit  the  name 
of  '  the  largest  village  in  Europe,'  which  was  given  to 
it  because  the  jealousy  of  other  towns  prevented  its 
having  any  vote  in  the  States  General  till  the  time  of 


THE  HAGUE. 


21 


Louis  Bonaparte,  who  gave  it  the  privileges  of  a  city. 
It  is  said  that  the  Hague,  more  than  any  other  place, 
may  recall  what  Versailles  was  just  before  the  great 
revolution.  It  has  thoroughly  the  aspect  of  a  little 
royal  city.  Without  any  of  the  crowd  and  bustle 
of  Amsterdam  and  Rotterdam,  it  is  not  dead  like  the 


THE    VIJVER. 

smaller  towns  of  Holland  ;  indeed,  it  even  seems  to 
have  a  quiet  gaiety,  without  dissipation,  of  its  own. 
All  around  are  parks  and  gardens,  whence  wide  streets 
lead  speedily  through  the  new  town  of  the  rich  bour- 
geoisie to  the  old  central  town  of  stadtholders,  where 
a  beautiful  lake,  the  Vijver,  or  fish-pond,  comes  as  a 


22  IN  HOLLAND. 

surprise,  with  the  eccentric  old  palace  of  the  Binnen- 
hof  rising  straight  out  of  its  waters.  We  had  been 
told  it  was  picturesque,  but  were  prepared  for  nothing 
so  charming  as  the  variety  of  steep  roofs  and  towers, 
the  clear  reflections,  the  tufted  islet,  and  the  beautiful 
colouring  of  the  whole  scene  of  the  Vijver.  Skirting 
the  lake,we  entered  the  precincts  of  the  palace  through 
the  picturesque  Gudevangen  Poort,  where  Cornelius 
de  Witte,  Burgomaster  of  Dort,  was  imprisoned  in 
1672,  on  a  false  accusation  of  having  suborned  the 
surgeon  William  Tichelaur  to  murder  the  Prince  of 
Orange.  He  was  dragged  out  hence  and  torn  to 
pieces  by  the  people,  together  with  his  brother  Jean 
de  Witte,  Grand  Pensioner,  whose  house  remains  hard 
by  in  the  Kneuterdijk. 

The  court  of  the  Binnenhof  is  exceedingly  hand- 
some, and  contains  the  ancient  Gothic  Hall  of  the 
Knights,  where  Johann  van  Olden  Barneveld,  Grand 
Pensioner,  or  Prime  Minister,  was  condemned  to  death 
'  for  having  conspired  to  dismember  the  States  of  the 
Netherlands,  and  greatly  troubled  God's  Church/  and 
in  the  front  of  which  (May  24,  1619)  he  was  beheaded. 

Close  to  the  north-east  gate  of  the  Binnenhof  is 
the  handsome  house  called  Mauritshuis,  containing 
the  inestimable  Picture  Gallery  of  the  Hague,  which 
will  bear  many  visits,  and  has  the  great  charm  of  not 


THE  HAGUE. 


23 


being  huge  beyond  the  powers  of  endurance.  On  the 
ground  floor  are  chiefly  portraits,  amongst  which  a 
simple  dignified  priest  by  Philippe  de  Champaigne, 
with  a  far-away  expression,  will  certainly  arrest  at- 
tention. Deeply  interesting  is  the  portrait  by  Raves- 
teyn  of  William  the  Silent,  in  his  rufl  and  steel  armour 


.fl--- 


HALL  OF  THE  KNIGHTS,  THE  HAGUE. 

embossed  with  gold — a  deeply  lined  face,  with  a  slight 
peaked  beard.  His  widow,  Louie  de  Coligny,  is  also 
represented.  There  is  a  fine  portrait  by  Schalcken 
of  our  William  the  Third.  Noble  likenesses  of  Sir 
George  Sheffield  and  his  wife  Anna  Wake,  by  Van- 
dyke, are  a  pleasing  contrast  to  the  many  works  of 


24  IN  HOLLAND, 

Rubens.  There  are  deeply  interesting  portraits  by 
Albert  Diirer  and  Holbein. 

On  the  first  floor  we  must  sit  down  before  the 
great  picture  which  Rembrandt  painted  in  his  twenty- 
sixth  year  (1632)  of  the  School  of  Anatomy.  Here 
the  shrewd  professor,  Nicholaus  Tulp,  with  a  face 
brimming  with  knowledge  and  intelligence,  is  ex- 
pounding the  anatomy  of  a  corpse  to  a  number  of 
members  of  the  guild  of  surgeons,  some  of  whom  are 
full  of  eager  interest  and  inquiry,  whilst  others  are  in- 
attentive :  the  dead  figure  is  greatly  foreshortened 
and  not  repulsive.  In  another  room,  a  fine  work  of 
Thomas  de  Keyser  represents  the  Four  Burgomasters 
of  Amsterdam  hearing  of  the  arrival  of  Marie  de 
Medicis.  A  beautiful  work  of  Adrian  van  Ostade  is 
full  of  light  and  character — but  only  represents  a 
stolid  boor  drinking  to  the  health  of  a  fiddler,  while 
a  child  plays  with  a  dog  in  the  background. 

A  group  of  admirers  will  always  be  found  round 
1  the  Immortal  Bull '  of  Paul  Potter,  which  was  con- 
sidered the  fourth  picture  in  importance  in  the  Louvre, 
when  the  spoils  of  Europe  were  collected  at  Paris. 
De  Amicis  says,  '  It  lives,  it  breathes ;  with  his  bull 
Paul  Potter  has  written  the  true  *  Idyl  of  Holland.* 
It  is,  however — being  really  a  group  of  cattle — not  a 
pleasing,    though    a   life-like    picture.       Much    more 


THE  HAGUE.  25 

attractive  is  the  exquisite  'Presentation'  of  Rembrandt 
(1631),  in  which  Joseph  and  Mary,  simple  peasants, 
present  the  Holy  Child  to  Simeon,  a  glorious  old 
man  in  a  jewelled  robe,  who  invokes  a  blessing  upon 
the  infant,  while  other  priests  look  on  with  interest. 
A  wonderful  ray  of  light,  falling  upon  the  principal 
group,  illuminates  the  whole  temple.  Perhaps  the 
most  beautiful  work  in  the  whole  gallery  is  the  Young 
Housekeeper  of  Gerard  Dou.  A  lovely  young  woman 
sits  at  work  by  an  open  window  looking  into  a  street. 
By  her  side  is  the  baby  asleep  in  its  cradle,  over  which 
the  maid  is  leaning.  The  light  falls  on  the  chandelier 
and  all  the  household  belongingsof  awell-to-do  citizen: 
in  all  there  is  the  same  marvellous  finish ;  it  is  said 
that  the  handle  of  the  broom  took  three  days  to  paint. 
There  is  not  much  to  discover  in  the  streets  of  the 
Hague.  In  the  great  square  called  the  Plein  is  the 
statue  of  William  the  Silent,  with  his  finger  raised, 
erected  in  1848  '  by  the  grateful  people  to  the  father 
of  their  fatherland.'  In  the  fish  market,  tame  storks 
are  kept,  for  the  same  reason  that  bears  are  kept  at 
Berne,  because  storks  are  the  arms  of  the  town.  But 
the  chief  attraction  of  the  place  lies  in  its  lovely 
walks  amid  the  noble  beeches  and  oaks  of  the  Bosch, 
beyond  which  on  the  left  is  Huis  ten  Bosch,  the  Petit 
Trianon  of  the  Hague,  the  favourite  palace  of  Queen 


26 


IN  HOLLAND. 


Sophie,  who  held  her  literary  court  and  died  there. 
It  is  a  quiet  country  house,  lookingout  upon  flats,  with 
dykes  and  a  windmill.  All  travellers  seem  to  visit  it, 
— which  must  be  a  ceaseless  surprise  to  the  extortion- 
ate custode  to  whom  they  have  to  pay  a  gulden  a  head, 
and  who  will  hurry  them  rapidly  through  some  com- 
monplace rooms  in  which  there  is  nothing  really  worth 
seeing.     One  room  is  covered  with  paintings  of  the 


SCHEVENINGEN. 


Rubens  school,  amid  which,  high  in  the  dome,  is  a 
portrait  of  the  Princess  Amalia  of  Solms,  who  built 
the  house  in  1647. 

A  tram  takes  people  for  twopence  halfpenny  to 
Scheveningen  through  the  park,  a  thick  wood  with 
charming  forest  scenery.  As  the  trees  become  more 
scattered,  the  roar  of  the  North  Sea  is  heard  upon  the 
shore.     Above  the  sands,  on  the  dunes  or  sand-hills, 


DELFT.  27 

which  extend  from  the  Helderto  Dunkirk,  is  abroad 
terrace,  lined  on  one  side  by  a  row  of  wooden  pavil- 
ions with  flags  and  porticoes,  and  below  it  are  long 
lines  of  tents,  necessary  in  the  intense  glare,  while, 
nearer  the  waves,  are  thousands  of  beehive-like 
refuges,  with  a  single  figure  seated  on  each.  The  flat 
monotonous  shore  would  soon  pall  upon  one,  yet 
through  the  whole  summer  it  is  an  extraordinary  lively 
scene.  The  placid  happiness  of  Dutch  family  life  has 
here  taken  possession.  On  Sunday  afternoons, 
especially,  the  sands  seem  as  crowded  with  human 
existence  as  they  are  represented  in  the  picture  of 
Lingelbach,  which  we  have  seen  in  the  Mauritshuis, 
portraying  the  vast  multitude  assembled  here  to  wit- 
ness the  embarkation  of  Charles  II.  for  England. 

An  excursion  must  be  made  to  Delft,  only  twenty 
minutes  distant  from  the  Hague  by  rail.  Pepys  calls 
it  '  a  most  sweet  town,  with  bridges  and  a  river  in 
every  street,'  and  that  is  a  tolerably  accurate  descrip- 
tion. It  seems  thinly  inhabited,  and  the  Dutch  them- 
selves look  upon  it  as  a  place  where  one  will  die  of 
ennui.  It  has  scarcely  changed  v/ith  two  hundred 
years.  The  view  of  Delft  by  Van  der  Meer  in  the 
Museum  at  the  Hague  might  have  been  painted 
yesterday.  All  the  trees  are  clipped,  for  in  artificial 
Holland  every  work  of  Nature  is  artificialised.     At 


28 


IN  HOLLAND. 


certain  seasons,  numbers  of  storks  may  be  seen  upon 
the  chimney-tops,  for  Delft  is  supposed  to  be  the  stork 
town /ar  excellence.  Near  the  shady  canal  Oude  Delft 
is  a  low  building,  once  the  Convent  of  S.  Agata,  with 
an  ornamented  door  surmounted  by  a  relief,  leading 


ENTRANCE  TO  S.  AGATA,  DELFT. 

into  a  courtyard.  It  is  a  common  barrack  now,  for 
Holland,  which  has  no  local  histories,  has  no  regard 
whatever  for  its  historic  associations  or  monuments. 
Yet  this  is  the  greatest  shrine  of  Dutch  history,  for  it 
is  here  that  William  the  Silent  died. 


DELFT.  29 

Philip  II.  had  promised  25,000  crowns  of  gold  to 
any  one  who  would  murder  the  Prince  of  Orange. 
An  attempt  had  already  been  made,  but  had  failed, 
and  William  refused  to  take  any  measures  for  self- 
protection,  saying, '  It  is  useless :  my  years  are  in 
the  hands  of  God  :  if  there  is  a  wretch  who  has  no 
fear  of  death,  my  life  is  in  his  hand,  however  I  may 
guard  it.*  At  length,  a  young  man  of  seven-and- 
twenty  appeared  at  Delft,  who  gave  himself  out  to  be 
one  Guyon,  a  Protestant,  son  of  Pierre  Guyon,  exe- 
cuted at  Besangon  for  having  embraced  Calvinism, 
and  declared  that  he  was  exiled  for  his  religion. 
Really  he  was  Balthazar  Gerard,  a  bigoted  Catholic, 
but  his  conduct  in  Holland  soon  procured  him  the 
reputation  of  an  evangelical  saint.  The  Prince  took 
him  into  his  service  and  sent  him  to  accompany  a 
mission  from  the  States  of  Holland  to  the  Court  of 
France,  whence  he  returned  to  bring  the  news  of  the 
death  of  the  Duke  of  Anjou  to  William.  At  that 
time  the  Prince  was  living  with  his  court  in  the  con- 
vent of  S.  Agata,  where  he  received  Balthazar  alone 
in  his  chamber.  The  moment  was  opportune,  but  the 
would-be  assassin  had  no  arms  ready.  William  gave 
him  a  small  sum  of  money  and  bade  him  hold  him- 
self in  readiness  to  be  sent  back  to  France.  With 
the  money  Balthazar  bought  two  pistols  from  a  soldier 


3o  IN  HOLLAND. 

(who  afterwards  killed  himself  when  he  heard  the  use 
which  was  made  of  the  purchase).  On  the  next  day, 
June  10,  1584,  Balthazar  returned  to  the  convent  as 
William  was  descending  the  staircase  to  dinner,  with 
his  fourth  wife,  Louise  de  Coligny  (daughter  of  the 
Admiral  who  fell  in  the  massacre  of  S.  Bartholomew), 
on  his  arm.  He  presented  his  passport  and  begged 
the  Prince  to  sign  it,  but  was  told  to  return  later.  At 
dinner  the  Princess  asked  William  who  was  the  young 
man  who  had  spoken  to  him,  for  his  expression  was 
the  most  terrible  she  had  ever  seen.  The  Prince 
laughed,  said  it  was  Guyon,  and  was  as  gay  as  usual. 
Dinner  being  over,  the  family  party  were  about  to  re- 
mount the  staircase.  The  assassin  was  waiting  in  a 
dark  corner  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  and  as  William 
passed  he  discharged  a  pistol  with  three  balls  and 
fled.  The  Prince  staggered,  saying, '  I  am  wounded  ; 
God  have  mercy  upon  me  and  my  poor  people.'  His 
sister  Catherine  van  Schwartzbourg  asked,  '  Do  you 
trust  in  Jesus  Christ  ? '  He  said, '  Yes,'  with  a  feeble 
voice,  sat  down  upon  the  stairs,  and  died. 

Balthazar  reached  the  rampart  of  the  town  in 
safety,  hoping  to  swim  to  the  other  side  of  the  moat, 
where  a  horse  awaited  him.  But  he  had  dropped  his 
hat  and  his  second  pistol  in  his  flight,  and  so  he  was 
traced  and  seized  before  he  could  leap  from  the  wall. 


DELFT.  31 

Amid  horrible  tortures,  he  not  only  confessed,  but 
continued  to  triumph  in  his  crime.  His  judges  be- 
lieved him  to  be  possessed  of  the  devil.  The  next 
day  he  was  executed.  His  right  hand  was  burnt  off 
in  a  tube  of  red-hot  iron  ;  the  flesh  of  his  arms  and 
legs  was  torn  off  with  red-hot  pincers ;  but  he  never 
made  a  cry.  It  was  not  till  his  breast  was  cut  open, 
and  his  heart  torn  out  and  flung  in  his  face,  that  he 
expired.  His  head  was  then  fixed  on  a  pike,  and  his 
body  cut  into  four  quarters,  exposed  on  the  four  gates 
of  the  town. 

Close  to  the  Prinsenhof  is  the  Oude  Kerk  with  a 
leaning  tower.  It  is  arranged  like  a  very  ugly  theatre 
inside,  but  contains,  with  other  tombs  of  celebrities, 
the  monument  of  Admiral  van  Tromp,  1650 — '  Mar- 
tinus  Harberti  Trompius  ' — whose  effigy  lies  upon  his 
back,  with  swollen  feet.  It  was  this  Van  Tromp  who 
defeated  the  English  fleet  under  Blake,  and  perished, 
as  represented  on  the  monument,  in  an  engagement 
off  Scheveningen.  It  was  he  who,  after  his  victory 
over  the  English,  caused  a  broom  to  be  hoisted  at  his 
mast-head  to  typify  that  he  had  swept  the  Channel 
clear  of  his  enemies. 

The  Nieuwe  Kerk  in  the  Groote  Markt  (1412-76) 
contains  the  magnificent  monument  of  William  the 
Silent  by  Hendrik  de  Keyser  and  A.  Quellin  (162 1). 


32  IN  HOLLAND. 

Black  marble  columns  support  a  white  canopy  over 
the  white  sleeping  figure  of  the  Prince,  who  is  re- 
presented in  his  little  black  silk  cap,  as  he  is  familiar 
to  us  in  his  pictures.  In  the  recesses  of  the  tomb — 
— '  somptueux  et  tourmente, '  as  Montegut  calls  it — are 
statues  of  Liberty,  Justice,  Prudence,  and  Religion. 
At  the  feet  of  William  lies  his  favourite  dog,  which 
saved  his  life  from  midnight  assassins  at  Malines, 
by  awakening  him.  At  the  head  of  the  tomb  is 
another  figure  of  William,  of  bronze,  seated.  In  the 
same  church  is  a  monument  to  Hugo  Grotius — '  pro- 
digium  Europae  ' — the  greatest  lawyer  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  presented  to  Henri  IV.  by  Barneveld 
as  '  La  merveille  de  la  Hollande. ' 

On  leaving  the  Hague  a  few  hours  should  be 
given  to  the  dull  university  town  of  Leyden,  unless  it 
has  been  seen  as  an  afternoon  excursion  from  the 
capital.  This  melancholy  and  mildewed  little  town, 
mouldering  from  a  century  of  stagnation,  the  birth- 
place of  Rembrandt,  surrounds  the  central  tower  of 
its  Burg — standing  in  the  grounds  of  an  inn,  which  ex- 
acts payment  from  those  who  visit  it.  Close  by  is  the 
huge  church  of  S.  Pancras — Houglansche  Kerk — of 
the  fifteenth  century,  containing  the  tomb  of  Van  der 
Werff,  burgomaster  during  the  famous  siege,  who  an- 
swered the  starving  people,  when  they  came  demand- 


LEY  DEN.  33 

ing  bread  or  surrender,  that  he  had  '  sworn  to  defend 
the  city,  and,  with  God's  help,  he  meant  to  keep  his 
oath,  but  that  if  his  body  would  help  them  to  prolong 
the  defence,  they  might  take  it  and  share  it  amongst 
those  who  were  most  hungry/  A  covered  bridge  over 
a  canal  leads  to  the  Bredenstrasse,  where  there  is  a 
picturesque  grey  stone  Stadhuis  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  It  contains  the  principal  work  of  Cornelius 
Engelbrechtsen  of  Leyden  (1468-1533),  one  of  the 
earliest  of  Dutch  painters — an  altarpiece  representing 
the  Crucifixion,  with  the  Sacrifice  of  Abraham  and 
Worship  of  the  Brazen  Serpent  in  the  side  panels, 
as  symbols  of  the  Atonement :  on  the  pedestal  is 
a  naked  body,  out  of  which  springs  a  tree — the 
tree  of  life — and  beside  it  kneel  the  donors.  The 
neighbouring  church  of  S.  Peter  (13 15)  contains 
the  tomb  of  Boerhaave,  the  physician,  whose  lectures 
in  the  University  were  attended  by  Peter  the  Great, 
and  for  whom  a  Chinese  mandarin  found  '  a  l'illustre 
M.  Boerhaave,  medecin,  en  Europe/  quite  sufficient 
direction.  Boerhaave  was  the  doctor  who  said  that 
the  poor  were  his  best  patients,  for  God  paid  for 
them. 

The  streets  are  grass-grown,  the  houses  damp,  the 
canals  green  with  weed.  The  University  has  fallen 
into    decadence    since    others   were     established    at 


34  IN  HOLLAND. 

Utrecht,  Groningen,  and  Amsterdam  ;  but  Leyden  is 
still  the  most  flourishing  of  the  four.  When  William 
of  Orange  offered  the  citizens  freedom  from  taxes,  as 
a  reward  for  their  endurance  of  the  famous  siege,  they 
thanked  him,  but  said  they  would  rather  have  a  uni- 
versity. Grotius  and  Cartesius  (Descartes),  Arminius 
and  Gomar,  were  amongst  its  professors,  and  the 
University  possesses  an  admirable  botanical  museum 
and  a  famous  collection  of  Japanese  curiosities. 

The  Rhine  cuts  up  the  town  of  Leyden  into  end- 
less islands,  connected  by  a  hundred  and  fifty  bridges. 
On  a  quiet  canal  near  the  Beesten  Markt  is  the 
Museum,  which  contains  the  '  Last  Judgment'  of 
Lucas  van  Leyden  (1494-1533),  a  scholar  of  En- 
gelbrechtsen,  and  one  of  the  patriarchs  of  Dutch 
painting. 

A  few  minutes  bring  us  from  Leyden  to  Haarlem 
by  the  railway.  It  crosses  an  isthmus  between  the 
sea  and  a  lake  which  covered  the  whole  country 
between  Leyden,  Haarlem,  and  Amsterdam  till  1839, 
when  it  became  troublesome,  and  the  States-General 
forthwith,  after  the  fashion  of  Holland,  voted  its 
destruction.  Enormous  engines  were  at  once  em- 
ployed to  drain  it  by  pumping  the  water  into  canals, 
which  carried  it  to  the  sea,  and  the  country  was  the 
richer  by  a  new  province. 


HAARLEM. 


35 


Haarlem,  on  the  river  Spaarne,  stands  out  distinct 

in  recollection  from  all  other  Dutch  towns,  for  it  has 

the  most  picturesque  market-place  in  Holland — the 

Groote    Markt  —  surrounded    by    quaint    houses    of 
varied  outline,  amidst  which  rises  the  Groote  Kerk 


MARKET-PLACE,   HAARLEM. 


of  S.  Bavo,  a  noble  cruciform  fifteenth-century 
building.  The  interior,  however,  is  as  bare  and 
hideous  as  all  other  Dutch  churches.  It  contains  a 
monument  to  the  architect  Conrad,  designer  of  the 
famous  locks  of  Katwijk,  i  the  defender  of  Holland 
against    the    fury    of    the    sea   and    the    power   of 


36  IN  HOLLAND. 

tempests/  Behind  the  choir  is  the  tomb  of  the  poet 
Bilderdijk,  who  only  died  in  1831,  and  near  this  the 
grave  of  Laurenz  Janzoom — the  Coster  or  Sacristan 
— who  is  asserted  in  his  native  town,  but  never  be- 
lieved outside  it,  to  have  been  the  real  inventor  of 
printing,  as  he  is  said  to  have  cut  out  letters  in  wood, 
and  taken  impressions  from  them  in  ink,  as  early  as 
1423.  His  partisans  also  maintain  that  whilst  he 
was  attending  a  midnight  mass,  praying  for  patience 
to  endure  the  ill-treatment  of  his  enemies,  all  his 
implements  were  stolen,  and  that  when  he  found 
this  out  on  his  return  he  died  of  grief.  It  is  further 
declared  that  the  robber  was  Faust  of  Mayence,  the 
brother  of  Gutenberg,  and  that  it  was  thus  that  the 
honour  of  the  invention  passed  from  Holland  to 
Germany,  where  Gutenberg  produced  his  invention 
of  movable  type  twelve  years  later.  There  is  a 
statue  of  the  Coster  in  front  of  the  church,  and,  on 
its  north  side,  his  house  is  preserved  and  adorned 
with  his  bust. 

Amongst  a  crowd  of  natives  with  their  hats  on, 
talking  in  church  as  in  the  market-place,  we  waited 
to  hear  the  famous  organ  of  Christian  Muller 
(1735-38),  and  grievously  were  we  disappointed  with 
its  discordant  noises.  All  the  men  smoked  in 
church,  and   this  we  saw  repeatedly  ;  but  it  would 


HAARLEM.  37 

be  difficult  to  say  where  we  ever  saw  a  Dutchman 
with  a  pipe  out  of  his  mouth.  Every  man  seemed 
to  be  systematically  smoking  away  the  few  wits  he 
possessed. 

Opposite  the  Groote  Kerk  is  the  Stadhuis,  an  old 
palace  of  the  Counts  of  Holland  remodelled.  It 
contains  a  delightful  little  gallery  of  the  works  of 
Franz  Hals,  which  at  once  transports  the  spectator 
into  the  Holland  of  two  hundred  years  ago — such  is 
the  marvellous  variety  of  life  and  vigour  impressed 
into  its  endless  figures  of  stalwart  officers  and  hand- 
some young  archers  pledging  each  other  at  banquet 
tables  and  seeming  to  welcome  the  visitor  with  jovial 
smiles  as  he  enters  the  chamber,  or  of  serene  old 
ladies,  '  regents  '  of  hospitals,  seated  at  their  council 
boards.  The  immense  power  of  the  artist  is  shown 
in  nothing  so  much  as  in  the  hands,  often  gloved, 
dashed  in  with  instantaneous  power,  yet  always 
having  the  effect  of  the  most  consummate  finish  at  a 
distance.  Behind  one  of  the  pictures  is  the  entrance 
to  the  famous  '  secret-room  of  Haarlem/  seldom  seen, 
but  containing  an  inestimable  collection  of  historic 
relics  of  the  time  of  the  famous  siege  of  Leyden. 

April  and  May  are  the  best  months  for  visiting 
Haarlem,  which  is  the  bulb  nursery  garden  of  the 
world.     '  Oignons  a    fleurs '  are  advertised    for  sale 


3&  IN  HOLLAND. 

everywhere.  Tulips  are  more  cultivated  than  any 
other  flowers,  as  ministering  most  to  the  national 
craving  for  colour;  but  times  are  changed  since  a 
single  bulb  of  the  tulip  '  L'Amiral  Liefkenshoch  * 
sold  for  4,500  florins,  one  of  '  Viceroy '  for  4,200, 
and  one  of  '  Semper  Augustus '  for  13,000. 

Now  we  entered  Amsterdam,  to  which  we  had 
looked  forward  as  the  climax  of  our  tour,  having 
read  of  it  and  pondered  upon  it  as  i  the  Venice  of 
the  north  ; '  but  our  expectations  were  raised  much 
too  high.  Anything  more  unlike  Venice  it  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine :  and  there  is  a  terrible  want 
of  variety  and  colour ;  many  of  the  smaller  towns  of 
Holland  are  far  more  interesting  and  infinitely  more 
picturesque. 

A  castle  was  built  at  Amsterdam  in  1204,  but 
the  town  only  became  important  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  since  which  it  has  been  the  most  commercial 
of  ancient  European  cities.  It  is  situated  upon  the 
influx  of  the  Amstel  to  the  Y,  as  the  arm  of  the 
Zuider  Zee  which  forms  the  harbour  is  called,  and  it 
occupies  a  huge  semicircle,  its  walls  being  enclosed 
by  the  broad  moat,  six  and  a  half  miles  long,  which 
is  known  as  Buitensingel.  The  greater  part  of  the 
houses  are  built  on  piles,  causing  Erasmus  to  say 
that  the  inhabitants  lived  on  trees  like  rooks.      In 


AMSTERDAM. 


39 


the  centre  of  the  town  is  the  great  square  called 
Dam,  one  side  of  which  is  occupied  by  the  handsome 
Royal  Palace — Het  Palais — built  by  J.  van  Kampen 
in  1648.  The  Nieuwe  Kerk  (1408-1470)  contains  a 
number  of  monuments  to  admirals,  including  those  of 
Van    Ruiter — l  immensi  tremor  oceani ' — who   com- 


MILL    NEAR    AMSTERDAM. 


manded  at  the  battle  of  Solbay,  and  van  Speyk, 
who  blew  himself  up  with  his  ship  in  183 1,  rather 
than  yield  to  the  Belgians.  In  the  Oude  Kerk  of 
1300  there  are  more  tombs  of  admirals.  Hard  by, 
in  the  Nieuwe  Markt,  is  the  picturesque  cluster  of 


40  IN  HOLLAND. 

fifteenth-century  towers    called     S.  Anthonieswaag, 
once  a  city  gate  and  now  a  weighing-house. 

But  the  great  attraction  of  Amsterdam  is  the 
Picture  Gallery  of  the  Trippenhuis,  called  the  Rijks 
Museum,  and  it  deserves  many  visits.  Amongst  the 
portraits  in  the  first  room  we  were  especially  attracted 
by  that  of  William  the  Silent  in  his  skull-cap,  by 
Miereveld,  but  all  the  House  of  Orange  are  repre- 
sented here  from  the  first  to  the  last.  We  also  see 
all  the  worthies  of  the  nation — Ruyter,  Van  Tromp 
and  his  wife,  Grotius  and  his  wife,  Johann  and 
Cornelis  de  Witt,  Johann  van  Oldenharneveldt,  and 
his  wife  Maria  of  Utrecht,  a  peaceful  old  lady  in  a 
ruff  and  brown  dress  edged  with  fur,  by  Moreelse. 
The  two  great  pictures  of  the  gallery  hang  opposite 
each  other.  That  by  Bartholomew  van  der  Heist, 
the  most  famous  of  Dutch  portrait-painters,  repre- 
sents the  Banquet  of  the  Musqueteers,  who  thus 
celebrated  the  Peace  of  Westphalia,  June  18,  1648. 
It  contains  twenty-five  life-size  portraits,  is  the  best 
work  of  the  master,  and  was  pronounced  by  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  to  be  the  '■  first  picture  of  portraits 
in  the  world/  The  canvas  is  a  mirror  faithfully 
representing  a  scene  of  actual  life.  In  the  centre 
sits  the  jovial,  rollicking  Captain  de  Wits  with  his 
legs   crossed.     The  delicate  imitation  of   reality   is 


AMSTERDAM.  41 

equally  shown  in  the  Rhenish  wine-glasses,  and  in 
the  ham  to  which  one  of  the  guests  is  helping 
himself. 

The  rival  picture  is  the  '  Night  Watch  '  of  Rem- 
brandt (1642),  representing  Captain  Frans  Banning 
Kok  of  Purmerland  and  his  lieutenant  Willem  van 
Ruytenberg  of  Vlaardingen,  emerging  from  their 
watch-house  on  the  Singel.  A  joyous  troop  pursue 
their  leader,  who  is  in  a  black  dress.  A  strange  light 
comes  upon  the  scene,  who  can  tell  whence  ?  Half 
society  has  always  said  that  this  picture  was  the 
marvel  of  the  world,  half  that  it  is  unworthy  of  its 
artist ;  but  no  one  has  ever  been  quite  indifferent  to  it. 

Of  the  other  pictures  we  must  at  least  notice,  by 
Nicholas  Maas,  a  thoughtful  girl  leaning  on  a  cushion 
out  of  a  window  with  apricots  beneath  ;  and  by  Jan 
Steen,  '  The  Parrot  Cage/  a  simple  scene  of  tavern 
life,  in  which  the  waiting-maid  calls  to  the  parrot 
hanging  aloft,  who  looks  knowingly  out  of  the  cage, 
whilst  all  the  other  persons  present  go  on  with  their 
different  employments.  In  the  '  Eve  of  S.  Nicholas/ 
another  work  of  the  same  artist,  a  naughty  boy  finds 
a  birch-rod  in  his  shoe,  and  a  good  little  girl,  laden 
with  gifts,  is  being  praised  by  her  mother,  whilst 
other  children  are  looking  up  the  chimney  by  which 
the  discriminating  fairy  Befana  is  supposed  to  have 


42  IN  HOLLAND. 

taken  her  departure.  There  are  many  beautiful 
works  of  Ruysdael,  most  at  home  amongst  water- 
falls;  a  noble  Vandyke  of  '  William  II.' as  a  boy, 
with  his  little  bride,  Mary  Stuart,  Charles  I.'s 
daughter,  in  a  brocaded  silver  dress,  and  the  famous 
Terburg  called  '  Paternal  Advice'  (known  in  England 
by  its  replica  at  Bridgewater  House),  in  which  a 
daughter  in  white  satin  is  receiving  a  lecture  from 
her  father,  her  back  turned  to  the  spectator,  and 
her  annoyance,  or  repentance,  only  exhibited  in  her 
shoulders.  Another  famous  work  of  Terburg  is  *  The 
Letter,'  which  is  being  brought  in  by  a  trumpeter  to 
an  officer  seated  in  his  uniform,  with  his  young  wife 
kneeling  at  his  side.  Of  Gerard  Dou  Amsterdam 
possesses  the  wonderful  *  Evening  School,'  with  four 
luminous  candles,  and  some  thoroughly  Dutch  chil- 
dren. A  girl  is  laboriously  following  with  her  finger 
the  instructions  received,  and  a  boy  is  diligently 
writing  on  a  slate.  The  girl  who  stands  behind, 
instructing  him,  is  holding  a  candle  which  throws  a 
second  light  upon  his  back,  that  upon  the  table 
falling  on  his  features  ;  indeed  the  painting  is  often 
known  as  the  '  Picture  of  the  Four  Candles.' 

Through  the  labyrinthine  quays  we  found  our 
way  to  the  Westerhoof  to  take  the  afternoon  steamer 
to    Purmerende    for   an    excursion    to    Broek,  l  the 


BROEK.  43 

cleanest  village  in  the  world.'  Crossing  the  broad 
Amstel,  the  vessel  soon  enters  a  canal,  which  some- 
times lies  at  a  great  depth,  nothing  being  visible  but 
the  tops  of  masts  and  points  of  steeples;  and  which 
then,  after  passing  locks,  becomes  level  with  the  tops 
of  the  trees  and  the  roofs  of  the  houses.  We  left  the 
steamer  at  T  Schouw,  and  entered,  on  a  side  canal, 
one  of  the  trekschuiten,  which,  until  the  time  of 
railroads,  were  the  usual  means  of  travel — a  long 
narrow  cabin,  encircled  by  seats,  forms  the  whole 
vessel,  and  is  drawn  by  a  horse  ridden  by  a  boy  (het- 
jagerte) — a  most  agreeable  easy  means  of  locomo- 
tion, for  movement  is  absolutely  imperceptible. 

No  place  was  ever  more  exaggerated  than  Broek. 
There  is  really  very  little  remarkable  in  it,  except 
even  a  greater  sense  of  dampness  and  ooziness  than 
in  the  other  Dutch  villages.  It  was  autumn,  and 
there  seemed  no  particular  attempt  to  remove  the 
decaying  vegetation  or  trim  the  little  gardens,  or  to 
sweep  up  the  dead  leaves  upon  the  pathways,  yet 
there  used  to  be  a  law  that  no  animal  was  to  enter 
Broek  for  fear  of  its  being  polluted.  A  brick  path 
winds  amongst  the  low  wooden  cottages,  painted  blue, 
green,  and  white,  and  ends  at  the  church,  with  its 
miniature  tombstones. 

The  most  interesting  excursion  to  be  made  from 


44  IN  HOLLAND. 

Amsterdam  is  that  to  the  Island  of  Marken  in  the 
Zuider  Zee — a  huge  meadow,  where  the  peasant 
women  pass  their  whole  lives  without  ever  seeing 
anything  beyond  their  island,  whilst  their  husbands, 
who  with  very  few  exceptions  are  fishermen,  see 
nothing  beyond  the  fisher-towns  of  the  Zuider 
Zee.  There  are  very  picturesque  costumes  here, 
the  men  wearing  red  woollen  shirts,  brown  vests, 
wooden  shoes,  fur  caps,  and  gold  buttons  to  their 
collars  and  knickerbockers ;  the  women,  embroidered 
stomachers,  which  are  handed  down  for  generations, 
and  enormous  white  caps,  lined  with  brown  to  show 
off  the  lace,  and  with  a  chintz  cover  for  week  days, 
and  their  own  hair  flowing  below  the  cap  over  their 
shoulders  and  backs. 

An  evening  train,  with  an  old  lady,  in  a  diamond 
tiara  and  gold  pins,  for  our  companion,  took  us  to  the 
Helder,  and  we  awoke  next  morning  at  the  pleasant 
little  inn  of  Du  Burg  upon  a  view  of  boats  and  nets 
and  the  low-lying  Island  of  Texel  in  the  distance. 
The  boats  and  the  fishermen  are  extremely  pic- 
turesque, but  there  is  nothing  else  to  see,  after  the 
visitor  has  examined  the  huge  granite  Helder  Dyke, 
the  artificial  fortification  of  north  Holland,  which 
contends  successfully  to  preserve  the  land  against  the 
sea.     There  is  an  admirably  managed  Naval  Institute 


THE  HELDER.  45 

here.  It  was  by  an  expedition  from  the  Helder  that 
Nova  Zembla  was  discovered,  and  it  was  near  this 
that  Admirals  Ruyter  and  Tromp  repulsed  the  English 
fleet.  Texel,  which  lies  opposite  the  Helder,  is  the 
first  of  a  chain  of  islands — Vlieland,  Terschelling, 
and  Ameland,  which  protect  the  entrance  of  the 
Zuider  Zee. 

The  country  near  the  Helder  is  bare  and  desolate 
in  the  extreme.  It  is  all  peat,  and  the  rest  of  Holland 
uses  it  as  a  fuel  mine.  It  was  here  that  the  genius  of 
Ruysdael  was  often  able  to  make  a  single  tree,  or  even 
a  bush  rising  out  of  the  flat  by  a  stagnant  pool,  both 
interesting  and  charming  to  the  spectator.  We  crossed 
the  levels  to  Alkmaar,  which  struck  us  as  being  alto- 
gether the  prettiest  place  in  the  country  and  as  pos- 
sessing all  those  attributes  of  cleanliness  which  are 
usually  given  to  Broek.  The  streets,  formed  of  bricks 
fitted  close  together,  are  absolutely  spotless,  and  every 
house  front  shines  fresh  from  the  mop  or  the  syringe. 
Yet  excessive  cleanliness  has  not  destroyed  the  pic* 
turesqueness  of  the  place.  The  fifteenth-century 
church  of  S.  Lawrence,  of  exquisitely  graceful  ex* 
terior,  rises  in  the  centre  of  the  town,  and,  in  spite  of 
being  hideously  defaced  inside,  has  a  fine  vaulted  roof, 
a  coloured  screen,  and,  in  the  chancel,  a  curious  tomb 
to  Florens  V.,  Count  of  Holland,  1296,  though  only 


46 


IN  HOLLAND. 


his  heart  is  buried  there.  Near  the  excellent  Hotel 
du  Burg  is  a  most  bewitching  almshouse,  with  an  old 
tourelle  and  screen,  and  a  lovely  garden  in  a  court 
surrounded  by  clipped  lime-trees.  And  more  charm- 
ing still  is  an  old  weigh-house  of  1582,  for  the  cheese, 
the  great  manufacture  of  the  district,  for  which  there 


%f.:>i 


*BSTi-- 


APPROACH    TO    ALKMAAR. 


is  a  famous  market  every  Friday,  where  capital  cos- 
tumes may  be  seen.  The  rich  and  gaily  painted  facade 
of  the  old  building,  reflected  in  a  clear  canal,  is  a 
perfect  marvel  of  beauty  and  colour;  and  artists 
should  stay  here  to  paint — not  the  view  given  here, 
but  another  which  we  discovered  too  late — more  in 
front,  with    gable-ended    houses  leading   up    to  the 


ALKMAAR,  HOORN. 


47 


principal  building,  and  all  its  glowing  colours  repeated 
in  the  water. 

It  is  three  hours'  drive  from  Alkmaar  to  Hoorn, 
a  charming   old    town   with   bastions,  gardens,  and 


THE    WEIGH-HOUSEt  ALKMAAR. 


semi-ruined  gates.  On  the  West  Poort  a  relief  com- 
memorates the  filial  devotion  of  a  poor  boy,  who 
arrived  here  in  1579,  laboriously  dragging  his  old 
mother  in  a  sledge,  when  all  were  flying  from  the 


48  IN  HOLLAND, 

Spaniards.  Opposite  the  weighing-house  for  the 
cheeses  is  the  State  College,  which  bears  a  shield  with 
the  arms  of  England,  sustained  by  two  negroes.  It 
commemorates  the  fact  that  when  Van  Tromp  defeat- 
ed the  English  squadron,  his  ships  came  from  Hoorn 
and  on  board  were  two  negroes,  who  took  from  the 
English  flagship  the  shield  which  it  was  then  the  cus- 
tom to  fix  to  the  stern  of  a  vessel,  and  brought  it  back 
here  as  a  trophy.  Hoorn  was  one  of  the  first  places  in 
Holland  to  embrace  the  reformed  religion,  which 
spread  from  hence  all  over  the  country,  but  now  not 
above  half  the  inhabitants  are  Calvinists. 

In  returning  from  Alkmaar  we  stopped  to  see 
Zaandam,  quite  in  the  centre  of  the  land  of  windmills, 
of  which  we  counted  eighty  as  visible  from  the  station 
alone.  They  are  of  every  shade  of  colour,  and  are 
mounted  on  poles,  on  towers,  on  farm  buildings,  and 
made  picturesque  by  every  conceivable  variety  of  prop, 
balcony,  gallery,  and  insertion.  Zaandam  is  a  very 
pretty  village  on  the  Zaan  which  flows  into  the  Y, 
with  gaily  painted  houses,  and  gay  little  gardens,  and 
perpetual  movement  to  and  from  its  landing-stage. 
Turning  south  from  thence,  a  little  entry  on  the  right 
leads  down  some  steps  and  over  a  bridge  to  some 
cottages  on  the  bank  of  a  ditch,  and  inside  the  last 
of  these  is  the  tiny  venerable  hovel  where  Peter  the 


UTRECHT. 


49 


Great  stayed  in  1697  as  Peter  Michaeloff.  It  retains 
its  tiled  roof  and  contains  some  old  chairs  and  a  box- 
bed,  but  unfortunately  Peter  was  only  here  a  week. 
The  evening  of  leaving  Zaandam  we  spent  at 
Utrecht,  of  which  the  name  is  so  well  known  from 


MILL    AT    ZAANDAM. 


the  peace  which  terminated  the  war  of  the  Spanish 
succession,  April  II,  171 5.  The  town,  long  the  seat 
of  an  ecclesiastical  court,  was  also  the  great  centre  of 
the  Jansenists,  dissenters  from  Roman  Catholicism 
under  Jansenius,  Bishop    of   Ypres,  condemned  by 


-1* 


5° 


IN  HOLLAND. 


Alexander  VII.  in  1656,  at  the  instigation  of  the 
Jesuits.  The  doctrines  of  Jansenius  still  linger  in  its 
gloomy  houses.  Every  appointment  of  a  bishop  is 
still  announced  to  the  Sovereign  Pontiff,  who  as  regu- 


PAUSHUIZEN,    UTRECHT. 


larly  responds  by  a  bull  of  excommunication,  which  is 
read  aloud  in  the  cathedral,  and  then  immediately 
put  away  and  forgotten.  Solemn  and  sad,  but  pre- 
eminently respectable,  Utrecht  has  more  the  aspect  of 
a  decayed  German  city  than  a   Dutch  town,  and   so 


KAMPEN.  51 

has  its  Cathedral  of  S.  Martin  (1254-67),  which, 
though  the  finest  Gothic  building  in  Holland,  is  only 
a  magnificent  fragment,  with  a  detached  tower  (132 1- 
82)  338  feet  high.  The  interior  as  usual  is  ruined  by 
Calvinism  and  yellow  paint.  It  contains  the  tomb  of 
Admiral  van  Gent,  who  fell  in  the  battle  of  Solbay. 
The  nave,  which  fell  in  1674,  has  never  been  rebuilt. 
The  S.  Pieterskerk  (1039)  an<^  S.  Janskerk  offer  noth- 
ing remarkable,  but  on  a  neighbouring  canal  is  the 
quaint  Paushuizen,  or  Pope's  house,  which  was  built 
by  Pope  Adrian  VI.  (Adrian  Floriszoom)  in  15 17. 
Near  this  is  the  pretty  little  Archiepiscopal  Museum, 
full  of  mediaeval  relics. 

The  interesting  Moravian  establishment  of  Zeist 
may  be  visited  from  Utrecht. 

From  Utrecht  we  travelled  over  sandy  flats  to 
Kampen,  near  the  mouth  of  the  wide  river  Yssel,  with 
three  picturesque  gates — Haghen  Poort,Cellebroeders 
Poort,  and  Broeders  Poort  ;  and  a  town  hall  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  Here,  as  frequently  elsewhere  in 
Holland,  we  suffered  from  arriving  famished  at  mid- 
day. All  the  inns  were  equally  inhospitable  :  '  The 
table  d'hote  is  at  4  P.  M.  :  we  cannot  and  zvill  not  be 
bothered  with  cooking  before  that,  and  there  is  noth- 
ing cold  in  the  house.'  l  But  you  have  surely  bread 
and  cheese  ?  '     '  Certainly  not — nothing' 


52 


IN  HOLLAND. 


At  Zwolle,  however,  we  found  the  Kroon  an  ex- 
cellent hotel  with  an  obliging  landlord ;  and  Zwolle, 
the  native  place  of  Terburg(i6o8),  is  a  charming  old 


CELLEBROEDERS    POORT,   KAMPEN. 


town  with  a  girdle  of  gardens,  a  fine  church  (exter- 
nally), and  a  noble  brick  gateway  called  the  Sassen- 
poort. 

It  was  more  the  desire  of  seeing  something  of  the 


LEEUWARDEN. 


53 


whole  country  than  anything  else,  and  a  certain  de- 
gree of  misplaced  confidence  in  the  pleasant  volumes 
of  Harvard,  which  took  us  up  from  Zwolle,  through 


SASSENPOORT,    AT    ZWOLLE. 


Friesland,  the  cow-paradise,  to  Leeuwarden,  its  an- 
cient capital.  Sad  and  gloomy  as  most  other  towns  of 
Holland  are,  Leeuwarden  is  sadder  and  gloomier  still. 
Its  streets  are  wide  and  not  otherwise  than  handsome, 


54  IN  HOLLAND. 

but  they  are  almost  deserted,  and  there  are  no  objects 
of  interest  to  see  unless  a  leaning  tower  can  be  called 
so,  with  a  top,  like  that  at  Pisa,  inclined  the  other  way, 
to  keep  it  from  toppling  over.  An  hour's  walk  from 
the  town  there  is  said  to  be  a  fine  still-inhabited  castle, 
and,  if  time  had  allowed,  respect  for  S.  Boniface  would 
have  taken  us  to  Murmerwoude,  where  he  was  mar- 
tyred (June  8,  853),  with  his  fifty-three  companions. 
King  Pepin  raised  a  hermitage  on  the  spot,  and  an 
ancient  brick  chapel  still  exists  there. 

Here  and  elsewhere  in  Friesland  nothing  is  so 
worthy  of  notice  as  the  helmets — the  golden  helmets 
of  the  women — costing  something  equivalent  to  25/. 
or  30/.,  handed  down  as  heirlooms,  fitting  close  to 
the  head,  and  not  allowing  a  particle  of  hair  to  be 
visible. 

In  the  late  evening  we  went  on  to  Groningen,  a 
university  town  with  a  good  hotel  (Seven  Provincen), 
an  enormous  square,  and  a  noble  tall  Gothic  tower  of 
1627,  whence  the  watchman  still  sounds  his  bugle. 
Not  far  off  is  Midwolde,  where  the  village  church  has 
fine  tombs  of  Charles  Jerome,  Baron  d'Inhausen  and 
his  wife,  Anna  von  Ewsum. 

As  late  as  the  sixteenth  century  this  province  was 
for  the  most  part  uninhabited — savage  and  sandy,  and 
overrun  by  wolves.     But  three  hundred  years  of  hard 


DE  VENTER.  55 

work  has  transformed  it  into  a  fertile  country,  watered 
by  canals,  and  sprinkled  with  country  houses.  Agri- 
culturally it  is  one  of  the  richest  provinces  of  the 
kingdom.  This  is  mostly  due  to  its  possessing  a  race 
of  peasant-farmers  who  never  shrink  from  personal 
hard  work,  and  who  will  continue  to  direct  the  plough 
whilst  they  send  their  sons  to  the  university  to  study 
as  lawyers,  doctors,  or  churchmen.  These  peasant 
farmers  or  boers  possess  the  beklemrcgt,  or  right  of 
hiring  land  on  an  annual  rent,  which  the  landlord  can 
never  increase.  A  peasant  can  bequeath  his  right  to 
his  heirs,  whether  direct  or  collateral.  To  the  land, 
this  system  is  an  indescribable  advantage,  the  cultiva- 
tors doing  their  utmost  to  bring  their  lands  to  perfec- 
tion, because  they  are  certain  that  no  one  can  take 
away  the  advantage  from  themselves  or  their  de- 
scendants. 

On  leaving  Groningen  we  traversed  the  grey,  mo- 
notonous, desolate  district  of  the  Drenthe,  sprinkled 
over  at  intervals  by  the  curious  ancient  groups  of 
stones  called  Hunnebedden,  or  beds  of  death  (Hun 
meaning  death),  beneath  which  urns  of  clay  contain- 
ing human  ashes  have  been  found.  From  Deventer 
(where  there  is  an  old  weigh-house,  and  a  cathe- 
dral of  S.  Lievin  with  a  crypt  and  nave  of  1334), 
time    did    not    allow  us   to    make    an    excursion    to 


56  IN  HOLLAND. 

the  great  royal  palace  of  Het  Loo,  the  favourite 
residence  of  the  sovereigns.  The  descriptions  in 
Harvard  rather  made  us  linger  unnecessarily  at  Zut- 
phen,  a  dull  town,  with  a  brick  Groote  Kerk  (S.  Wal- 
purgis)  which  has  little  remaining  of  its  original 
twelfth-century  date,  and  a  rather  picturesque  '  bit ' 
on  the  walls,  where  the  '  Waterpoort '  crosses  the 
river  like  a  bridge. 

At  Arnhem,  the  Roman  Arenacum,  once  the  resi- 
dence of  the  Dukes  of  Gueldres,  and  still  the  capital 
of  Guelderland,  we  seemed  to  have  left  all  the  charac- 
teristics of  Holland  behind.  Numerous  modern  villas, 
which  might  have  been  built  for  Cheltenham  or 
Leamington,  cover  the  wooded  hills  above  the  Rhine. 
In  the  Groote  Kerk  (1452)  is  a  curious  monument  of 
Charles  van  Egmont,  Due  de  Gueldres,  1538,  but 
there  is  nothing  else  to  remark  upon.  We  intended 
to  have  made  an  excursion  hence  to  Cleves,  but  des- 
perately wet  weather  set  in,  and,  as  Dutch  rain  often 
lasts  for  weeks  together  when  it  once  begins,  we  were 
glad  to  hurry  England-wards,  only  regretting  that  we 
could  not  halt  at  Nymegen,  a  most  picturesque  place, 
where  Charlemagne  lived  in  the  old  palace  of  the 
Valckhof  (or  Waalhof,  residence  on  the  Waal),  of 
which  a  fragment  still  exists,  with  an  old  baptistery, 
a  Stadhuis  of   1534,  and  a  Groote  Kerk  containing  a 


CHARACTERISTIC   TOWNS.  57 

noble  monument  to  Catherine  de  Bourbon  (1469), 
wife  of  Duke  Adolph  of  Gueldres. 

We  left  Holland  feeling  that  we  should  urge  our 
friends  by  all  means  to  see  the  pictures  at  Rotterdam, 
the  Hague,  and  Amsterdam,  but  to  look  for  all  other 
characteristics  of  the  Netherlands  in  such  places  as 
Breda,  Dortrecht,  Haarlem,  Alkmaar,  and  Zwolle. 


DENMARK 


IN  DENMARK. 

rTORMERLY  the  terrors  of  a  sea-voyage  from 
■*■  Kiel  deterred  many  travellers  from  thinking  of 
a  tour  in  Denmark  or  Sweden,  but  now  a  succession 
of  railways  makes  everything  easy,  and  while  nothing 
can  be  imagined  more  invigorating  or  pleasant,  there 
is  probably  no  pleasure  more  economical  than  a  sum- 
mer in  Scandinavia.  Those  who  are  worn  with  a 
London  season  will  feel  as  if  every  breath  in  the 
crystal  air  of  Denmark  endued  them  with  fresh  health 
and  strength,  and  then,  after  they  have  seen  its  old 
palaces  and  its  beech  woods  and  its  Thorwaldsen 
sculptures,  a  voyage  of  ten  minutes  will  carry  them 
over  the  narrow  Sound  to  the  soft  beauties  of  genial 
Sweden  and  the  wild  splendours  of  Norway. 

Either  Hamburg  or  Lubeck  must  be  the  starting- 
point  for  the  overland  route  to  Denmark,  and  the 
old  free  city  of  Lubeck,  though  quite  a  small  place, 
is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  towns  in  Germany. 
We  arrived  there  one  hot  summer  afternoon,  after  a 


62  IN  DENMARK, 

weary  journey  over  the  arid  sandy  plains  which 
separate  it  from  Berlin,  and  suddenly  seemed  to  be 
transported  into  a  land  of  verdure.  Lilacs  and 
roses  bloomed  everywhere  ;  a  wood  lined  the  bank 
of  the  limpid  river  Trave,  and  in  its  waters — beyond 
the  old  wooden  bridge — were  reflected  all  the  tallest 
steeples,  often  strangely  out  of  the  perpendicular,  of 
many-towered  Liibeck.  A  wonderful  gate  of  red 
brick  and  golden-hued  terra-cotta  is  the  entrance 
from  the  station,  and  in  the  market-place  are  the 
quaintest  turrets,  towers,  tourelles,  but  all  ending  in 
spires.  The  lofty  houses,  so  full  of  rich  colour,  throw 
cool  shade  on  the  streets  on  the  hottest  summer 
day ;  and  we  enjoyed  a  Sunday  in  the  excellent 
hotel,  with  wooden  galleries  opening  towards  a  splash- 
ing fountain  in  a  quiet  square,  where  a  fat  constable 
busied  himself  in  keeping  everybody  from  fulfilling 
any  avocation  whatever  whilst  service  was  being  per- 
formed in  the  churches,  but  let  them  do  exactly  as 
they  pleased  as  soon  as  it  was  over. 

It  must,  at  best,  be  a  weary  journey  across  West 
Holstein,  through  a  succession  of  arid  flats  varied  by 
stagnant  swamps.  We  spent  the  weary  hours  in 
studying  Dunham's  '  History  of  Denmark,  Sweden, 
and  Norway,'  which  cannot  be  sufficiently  recom- 
mended to  all  Scandinavian  travellers.     The  glowing 


SLESWIG.  63 

accounts  in  the  English  guide  books  of  a  lake  and  an 
old  castle  beguiled  us  into  spending  a  night  at  Sles- 
wig,  but  it  turned  out  that  the  lake  had  disappeared 
before  the  memory  of  man,  and  that  the  castle  was  a 
white  modern  barrack.  The  colourless  town  and  its 
long  sleepy  suburb,  moored  as  if  upon  a  raft  in  the 
marshes,  straggle  along  the  edge  of  a  waveless  fiord. 
At  the  end  is  the  rugged  cathedral  like  a  barn,  with 
a  belfry  like  a  dovecot,  and  inside  it  a  curious  altar- 
piece  by  Hans  Brtiggemann,  pupil  of  Albert  Diirer, 
and  the  noble  monument  of  Frederick  I.,  the  first 
Lutheran  King  of  Denmark ;  while  richly  carved 
doors  at  the  sides  of  the  church  admit  one  to  see  how 
the  grandmother  of  the  Princess  of  Wales  and  various 
other  potentates  lie — Danish  fashion — in  gorgeous 
exposed  coffins  without  any  tombs  at  all.  Every- 
where roses  grow  in  the  streets,  trained  upon  the 
house  walls  ;  and,  up  the  pavement,  crowds  of  the 
children  were  hurrying  in  the  early  morning,  carrying 
in  their  hands  the  shoes  they  were  going  to  wear  when 
they  were  in  school.  In  the  evenings  these  children 
will  not  venture  outside  the  town,  for  over  the  marshes 
they  say  that  the  wild  huntsman  rides,  followed  by 
his  demon  hounds  and  blowing  his  magic  horn.  It  is 
the  spirit  of  Duke  Abel  the  fratricide,  who,  in  the 
fens,  murdered  his  brother  Eric  VI.  of  Denmark,  and 


^ 


64  IN  DENMARK. 

who  was  afterwards  lost  there  himself,  falling  from 
his  horse,  and  being  dragged  down  by  the  weight  of 
his  armour.  To  give  rest  to  his  wandering  spirit,  the 
clergy  dug  up  his  body  and  despatched  it  to  Bremen, 
but  there  his  vampire  gave  the  canons  no  peace, 
so  they  sent  the  corpse  back  again,  and  now  it  lies 
once  more  in  the  marshes  of  Gottorp. 

Most  unutterably  hideous  is  the  country  through 
which  the  railway  now  travels,  wearisome  levels  only 
broken  here  and  there  by  mounds,  probably  sepul- 
chral. A  straight  line  with  tiny  hillocks  at  intervals 
would  do  for  a  sketch  of  the  whole  of  Sleswig  and 
the  greater  part  of  Funen  and  Zealand.  In  times  of 
early  Danish  history  it  was  a  frequent  punishment  to 
bury  criminals  alive  in  these  dismal  peat  mosses. 
Twelve  hours  of  changelessly  flat  scenery  bring 
travellers  from  Hamburg  to  Frederikshaven,  where 
we  embark  upon  the  Little  Belt,  the  luggage-vans  of 
the  train  being  shunted  on  board  the  steamer.  Im- 
mediately opposite  lie  the  sandy  shores  of  Funen, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  we  are  there.  Then  four  hours 
of  ugly  scenery  take  us  across  the  island.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  look  out  at  the  little  town  of  Odense, 
called  after  the  old  hero-god,  which  was  the  birth- 
place of  Hans  Christian  Andersen  in  1805.  The 
cathedral  of  Odense  contains  the  shrine  of  the  sainted 


NYBORG,    KORSOR.  65 

King  Canute  IV.  (1080-86),  who  was  murdered 
while  kneeling  before  the  altar,  owing  to  indignation 
at  the  severe  taxation  to  which  the  love  of  Church 
endowment  had  incited  him. 

Nyborg,  where  we  meet  the  sea  again,  will  recall 
to  lovers  of  old  ballads  the  story  of  the  innocent 
young  knight  Folker  Lowmanson,  and  his  cruel  death 
here  in  a  barrel  of  spikes,  from  the  jealousy  of 
Waldemar  IV.  for  his  beautiful  queen  Helwig,  and 
how,  to  know  his  fate — 

With  anxious  heart  did  Denmark's  Queen 

To  Nyborg  urge  her  horse, 
And  at  the  gate  his  bier  she  met, 

And  on  it  Folker's  corse. 

Such  honour  shown  to  son  of  knight 

I  never  yet  could  hear  ; 
The  Queen  of  Denmark  walked  on  foot 

Herself  before  his  bier. 

In  tears  then  Helwig  mounted  horse 

And  silent  homeward  rode, 
For  in  her  heart  a  life-long  grief 

Had  taken  its  abode. 

At  Nyborg  we  embark  on  a  miserable  steamer  for 
the  passage  of  the  Great  Belt.  It  lasts  an  hour  and  a 
half,  and  is  often  most  wretched.  On  landing  at 
Korsor  travellers  are  hurried  into  the  train  which  is 
waiting  for  the  vessel. 


66  IN  DENMARK. 

Now  the  country  improves  a  little.  Here  and 
there  we  pass  through  great  beech  woods.  Down 
the  green  glades  of  one  of  them  a  glimpse  is  caught 
of  the  college  of  Soro.  It  occupies  the  site  of  a 
monastery  founded  by  Asker  Ryg,  a  chieftain  who, 
when  he  departed  on  a  journey  of  warfare,  vowed  that 
if  the  child  to  which  his  wife,  Inge,  was  about  to  give 
birth  proved  to  be  a  girl,  he  would  give  his  new 
building  a  spire,  but  a  tower  if  it  were  a  boy.  On  his 
return  he  saw  two  towers  rising  in  the  distance.  Inge 
had  given  birth  to  twin  sons,  who  lived  to  become 
Asbiorn  Snare,  celebrated  in  the  ballad  of  i  Fair 
Christal/  and  Absalon,  the  warrior  Bishop  of  Roes- 
kilde — '  first  captain  by  sea  and  land/  Absalon  is 
buried  here  in  the  church  of  Soro,  which  contains  the 
tomb  of  King  Olaf,  the  shortlived  son  of  the  famous 
Queen  Margaret ;  of  her  cruel  father,  Waldemar 
Atterdag,  whose  last  words  expressed  regret  that  he 
had  not  suffocated  his  daughter  in  her  cradle ;  and 
of  her  grandfather,  Christopher  II.,  with  his  wife, 
Euphemia  of  Pomerania.  Soon  we  pass  Ringsted, 
which  is  scarcely  worth  stopping  at,  though  its  church 
contains  the  fine  brass  of  King  Erik  Menred  (13 19) 
and  his  queen,  Ingeborga,  and  though  twenty  kings 
and  queens  were  entombed  there  before  Roeskilde 
became  the  royal  place  of  sepulture.     Amongst  them 


RINGSTED.  67 

lies  the  popular  Queen  Dagmar,  first  wife  of  Waldemar 
II.,  still  celebrated  in  ballad  literature,  for  there  is 
scarcely  a  Dane  who  is  ignorant  of  the  touching  story 
of  i  Queen  Dagmar's  Death/  which  begins 

Queen  Dagmar  is  lying  at  Ribe  sick, 
At  Ringsted  is  made  her  grave, 

and  which  contains  her  last  touching  request  to  her 
husband,  and  her  simple  confession  of  the  only  '  sin ' 
she  could  remember — 

Had  I  on  a  Sunday  not  laced  my  sleeves, 

Or  border  upon  them  sewn, 
No  pangs  had  I  felt  by  day  or  night, 

Or  torture  of  hell-fire  known. 

Tradition  tells  us  that  the  dismal  town  of  Ringsted 
was  founded  by  King  Ring,  a  warrior  who,  when  he 
was  seriously  wounded  in  battle,  placed  the  bodies  of 
his  slain  heroes  and  that  of  his  queen,  Alpol,  on  board 
a  ship  laden  with  pitch,  and  going  out  to  the  open 
sea,  set  the  vessel  on  fire,  and  then  fell  upon  his 
sword. 

In  the  twilight  we  pass  Roeskilde,  and  at  io£  P.M. 
long  rows  of  street  lamps  reflected  in  canals  show 
that  we  have  reached  Copenhagen. 

To  those  whose  travels  have  chiefly  led  them 
southwards  there  is  a  great  pleasure  in  the  first 
awaking  in   Copenhagen.     Everything   is   new — the 


68  IN  DENMARK. 

associations,  the  characteristics,  the  history ;  even  the 
very  names  on  the  omnibuses  arc  suggestive  of  the 
sagas  and  romances  of  the  North ;  and  though  the 
summer  sun  is  hot,  the  atmosphere  is  as  clear  as  that 
of  a  tramontana  day  in  an  Italian  winter,  and  the  air 
is  indescribably  elastic.  The  comfortable  Hotel 
d'Angleterre  stands  in  the  Kongens  Nytorv,  a  modern 
square,  with  trees  surrounding  a  statue  in  the  centre, 
but  there  are  glimpses  of  picturesque  shipping  down 
the  side  streets,  and  hard  by  is  a  spire  quite  ideally 
Danish,  formed  by  three  marvellous  dragons  with 
their  tails  twisted  together  in  the  air.  Tradition 
declares  that  it  was  moved  bodily  from  Calmar,  in 
the  south  of  Sweden.  It  rises  now  from  a  beautiful 
building  of  brick  erected  in  1624  by  Christian  IV., 
brother-in-law  of  James  I.  of  England,  and  used  as 
the  Exchange. 

Not  far  off  is  the  principal  palace — Christiansborg 
Slot,  often  rebuilt,  and  very  white  and  ugly.  It 
was  partially  destroyed  by  fire  in  1884.  Besides 
the  royal  residence,  its  vast  courts  contain  the 
Chambers  of  Parliament,  the  Royal  Library,  and  a 
Picture  Gallery  chiefly  filled  with  the  works  of  native 
artists,  amongst  which  those  of  Marstrand  and  Bloch 
are  very  striking  and  well  worthy  of  attention. 

A  queer  building  in  the  shadow  of   the  palace, 


COPENHAGEN. 


69 


which  attracts  notice  by  its  frescoed  walls,  is  the 
Thorwaldsen  Museum,  the  shrine  where  Denmark  has 
reverentially  collected  all  the  works  and  memorials  of 
her  greatest  artist  —  Bertel  Thorwaldsen.     Though 


THE  DRAGON  TOWER,  COPENHAGEN, 


his  family  is  said  to  have  descended  from  the  Danish 
king  Harold  Stildetand,  he  was  born  (in  1770)  the  son 
of  one  Gottschalk,  who,  half  workman,  half  artist,  was 
employed  in  carving  figures  for  the  bows  of  vessels. 


7o  IN  DENMARK. 

From  his  earliest  childhood  little  Bertel  accompanied 
his  father  to  the  wharfs  and  assisted  him  in  his  work, 
in  which  he  showed  such  intelligence  that  in  his 
eleventh  year  he  was  allowed  to  enter  the  Free  School 
of  Art.  Here  he  soon  made  wonderful  progress  in 
sculpture,  but  could  so  little  be  persuaded  to  attend 
to  other  studies  that  he  reached  the  age  of  eighteen 
scarcely  able  to  read.  In  his  twenty-third  year  he 
obtained  the  great  gold  medal,  to  which  a  travelling 
stipend  is  attached,  and  thus  he  was  enabled  to  go  to 
Rome,  -where,  encouraged  at  first  by  the  patronage  of 
Thomas  Hope,  the  English  banker,  he  soon  reached 
the  highest  pitch  of  celebrity.'  Denmark  became 
proud  of  her  son,  so  that  his  visits  to  his  native  town 
in  1 8 19  and  1837  were  like  triumphal  progresses,  all 
the  city  going  forth  to  meet  him,  and  lodging  him 
splendidly  at  the  public  cost ;  but  his  heart  always 
clung  to  the  Eternal  City,  which  continued  to  be 
the  scene  of  his  labours.  Of  his  many  works  per- 
haps his  noble  lion  at  Lucerne  is  the  best  known.  He 
never  married,  though  he  was  long  attached  to  a 
member  of  the  old  Scottish  house  of  Mackenzie,  and 
he  died  on  a  visit  to  Copenhagen  in  1844. 

In  accordance  with  Thorwaldsen's  own  wish,  he 
rests  in  the  centre  of  his  works.  His  grave  has  no 
tombstone,  but  is  covered  with  green  ivy.     All  around 


COPENHAGEN.  71 

the  little  court  which  contains  it  are  halls  and  galleries 
rilled  with  the  marvellously  varied  productions  of  his 
genius,  arranged  in  the  order  of  their  execution — casts 
of  all  his  absent  sculptures  and  many  most  grand 
originals.  Especially  beautiful  are  the  statue  of 
Mercury,  modelled  from  a  Roman  boy,  of  which  the 
original  is  in  the  possession  of  Lord  Ashburton,  and 
the  exquisite  reliefs  of  the  Ages  of  Love,  and  of  Day 
and  Night,  the  two  latter  resulting  from  the  inspiration 
of  a  single  afternoon.  But  all  seem  to  culminate  in 
the  great  Hall  of  Christ,  for  though  the  statues  here 
are  only  cast  from  those  in  the  Vor  Frue  Kirche,  they 
are  far  better  seen  in  the  well-lighted  chamber  than 
in  the  church.  The  colossal  figures  of  the  apostles 
lead  up  to  the  Saviour  in  sublime  benediction  ;  perhaps 
the  statues  of  Simon  Zelotes  and  the  pilgrim  S.  James 
are  the  noblest  amongst  them.  In  the  last  room  are 
gathered  all  the  little  personal  memorials  of  Thor- 
waldsen — his  books,  pictures,  and  furniture. 

The  Museum  of  Northern  Antiquities  should  also 
be  visited  and  the  Tower  of  the  Trinity  Church,  with 
a  roadway  inside  making  an  easy  ascent  to  the  strange 
view  of  many  roofs  and  many  waters  which  is  obtained 
from  the  top.  But  the  most  delightful  place  in  Copen- 
hagen is  the  Palace  of  Rosenborg,  standing  at  the  end 
of  a  stately  old  garden — where  it  was  built  by  Inigo 


72 


IN  DENMARK. 


Jones  for  Christian  IV.,  and  containing  the  room  where 
the  king  died,  with  his  wedding  dress,  and  most  of  his 
other  clothes  and  possessions.  This  palace-building 
monarch,  celebrated  for  the  drinking  bouts  in  which 


THE    ROSENBORG    PALACE,    COPENHAGEN. 


he  indulged  with  his  brother-in-law,  James  I.  of 
England,  was  the  greatest  dandy  of  his  time,  and 
before  we  leave  Denmark  we  shall  become  very- 
familiar  with  his  portraits,  always  distinguished  by 


COPENHAGEN.  73 

the  wonderful  left  whisker  twisted  into  a  pigtail  falling 
on  one  side  of  the  chin.  Other  rooms  in  Rosenborg 
are  devoted  to  each  of  the  succeeding  sovereigns,  and 
filled  with  relics  and  memorials  which  carry  one  back 
into  most  romantic  corners  of  Danish  history,  the 
ever-alternate  succession  of  Christians  and  Fredericks 
making  a  most  terrible  bewilderment,  down  to  the 
two  English  queens,  Louisa  the  beloved  and  Caroline 
Matilda  the  unfortunate.  Most  curious  amongst  a 
myriad  objects  of  value  are  the  three  great  silver 
Lions — '  Great  Belt,  Little  Belt,  and  Sound  ' — which, 
by  ancient  custom,  appear  as  mourners  at  all  the 
funerals  of  the  sovereigns,  accompanying  them  to 
Roeskilde  and  returning  afterwards  to  the  palace. 

Those  interested  in  such  matters  will  wander  as 
we  did  through  the  more  ancient  parts  of  Copenhagen 
in  search  of  old  silver  and  specimens  of  the  older 
Copenhagen  china.  Formerly  the  china  imitated  that 
of  Miessen,  but  it  has  now  a  more  distinctive  character, 
and  is  chiefly  used  in  reproducing  the  works  of  Thor- 
waldsen.  Copenhagen  has  no  other  especial  manu- 
factures. 

No  visitors  to  the  Danish  capital  must  omit  a  visit 
to  Tivoli,  the  pretty  odd  pleasure  grounds — very  re- 
spectable too — near  the  railway  station,  where  all 
kinds  of   evening  amusements  are  provided  in  illu- 


74  IN  DENMARK. 

minated  gardens  and  woods  by  a  tiny  lake,  really 
very  pretty.  Here  we  watched  the  cars  rushing  like 
a  whirlwind  down  one  hill  and  up  another,  with  their 
inmates  screaming  in  pleasurable  agony  ;  and  saw  the 
extraordinary  feats  of  '  the  Cannon  King,'  who  tossed 
a  cannon  ball,  catching  it  on  his  hands,  his  head,  his 
feet — anywhere,  and  then  stood  in  front  of  a  cannon 
and  was  shot,  receiving  in  his  hands  the  ball,  which 
did  nothing  worse  than  twist  him  round  by  its  force. 

One  day  we  went  out — an  hour  and  a  half  by  rail 
— to  Roeskilde,  where  a  church  was  first  founded  by 
William,  an  Englishman,  in  the  days  of  King  Harold 
Blaatand  (Blue-tooth),  brother  of  Canute  the  Great. 
It  is  dedicated  to  S.  Lucius,  because  tradition  tells 
that  a  terrible  dragon,  who  infested  the  neighbouring 
fiord  and  banqueted  on  the  inhabitants,  was  destroyed 
for  ever  when  the  head  of  the  holy  Pope  S.  Lucius 
was  brought  from  Rome  and  presented  for  his  break- 
fast. The  tall  spires  of  the  cathedral  rise,  slender  and 
grey,  from  the  little  town,  and  beneath,  embosomed  in 
sweeping  cornfields,  a  lovely  fiord  stretches  away  into 
pale  blue  distances.  Endless  kings  and  queens  are 
buried  at  Roeskilde.  The  earlier  sovereigns  have 
glorious  tombs,  amongst  which  the  most  conspicuous 
is  that  of  Queen  Margaret — '  the  Semiramis  of  the 
North/  who,  born  in  the  prison  of  Syborg,  where  her 


ROESKILDE. 


75 


unhappy  mother  Queen  Helwig  was  imprisoned  by 
Waldemar  Atterhag,  and  allowed  to  run  wild  in  the 
forest  in  her  childhood,  lived  to  become  one  of  the  wis- 
est of  Northern  sovereigns,  and  to  unite,  by  the  Act 
known  as  '  the  Union  of  Calmar/  the  crowns  of  Den- 
mark, Sweden,  and  Norway,  which  attained  unwonted 


»•***■-• r- 


r^-i 


ROESKILDE. 


prosperity  under  her  sway.  There  are  effigies  of 
Frederic  II.  and  Christian  IV.,  the  grandfather  and 
uncle  of  our  Charles  I.,  which  recall  his  type  of  coun- 
tenance and  have  the  same  peaked  beard.  Christian 
IV.,  the  great  palace-builder,  whose  birth  was  believed 
to  have  been  prophesied  by  the  mermaid  Isbrand, 
was  born  (April   12,  1577)  under  a  hawthorn  tree  on 


76  IN  DENMARK. 

the  road  between  Frederiksborg  and  Roeskilde,  as 
his  mother,  Sophia  of  Mecklenbourg,  insisted  on  tak- 
ing walks  with  her  ladies  in  waiting  far  longer  than 
was  prudent.  This  king,  his  father,  and  all  the  later 
members  of  his  royal  house  lie,  not  in  their  tombs, 
but  in  gorgeous  coffins  embossed  with  gold  and  silver 
upon  the  floor  of  the  church,  which  has  a  very  odd 
effect.  The  entrance  of  one  of  the  private  chapels  is 
a  gate  with  a  huge  figure,  in  wrought  ironwork,  of  the 
devil  with  his  tail  in  his  hand.  In  another  chapel  are 
fine  works  of  Marstrand  (1810 — 75),  the  best  of  the 
pupils  of  Eckersberg,  who  gave  the  first  stimulus  to 
the  art  of  painting  in  Denmark,  where  it  has  since 
attained  to  great  eminence. 

The  district  around  Roeskilde,  and  indeed  the 
greater  part  of  Denmark,  is  devoted  to  corn,  for  there 
is  no  country  in  Europe,  except  England  and  Bel- 
gium, which  can  compete  with  this  as  a  corn-grower. 
It  is  curious  that  though  the  neighbouring  Sweden 
and  Norway  are  so  covered  with  pines,  no  conifer  will 
grow  in  Denmark  except  under  most  careful  cultiva- 
tion. The  principal  native  tree  is  the  beech,  and  the 
beech  woods  are  nowhere  more  beautiful  than  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Copenhagen.  The  railway  to 
Elsinore  passes  through  the  beautiful  beech  forests 
which  are  familiar  to  us  through  the  stories  of  Hans 


FREDERIKSBORG. 


77 


Christian  Andersen.  Here,  near  a  little  roadside 
station,  rises  the  Hampton  Court  of  Denmark,  the 
great  Castle  of  Frederiksborg,  the  most  magnificent 
of  the  creations  of  Christian  IV.,  which  John  of 
Friburg  erected  for  that  monarch,  who  looked  per- 
sonally into  the  minutest  details  of  his  expenses,  and 


THE    CASTLE    OF    FREDERIKSBORG. 


so  raised  this  structure,  glorious  as  it  is,  with  an 
economy  which  greatly  astonished  his  thrifty  parlia- 
ment. In  the  depths  of  the  beech  woods  is  a  great 
lake,  in  the  centre  of  which,  on  three  islands  united 
by  bridges,  rises  the  palace,  most  beautiful  in  its  time, 
honoured  hues  of  red  brick  and  grey  stone,  with  high 
roofs,  richly  sculptured  windows,  and  wondrous 
towers  and  spires.     Each  view  of  the  castle  seems 


78  IN  DENMARK. 

more  picturesque  than  the  last.  It  is  a  dream  of 
architectural  beauty,  to  which  the  great  expanse  of 
transparent  waters  and  the  deep  verdure  of  the  sur- 
rounding woods  add  a  mysterious  charm.  A  gigantic 
gate  tower  admits  the  visitor  to  the  courtyard,  where 
Christian  IV.,  with  his  own  hand,  chopped  off  the 
head  of  the  Master  of  the  Mint,  which  he  had  estab- 
lished here,  who  had  defrauded  him.  '  He  tried  to 
cheat  us,  but  we  have  cheated  him,  for  we  have 
chopped  his  head  off/  said  the  King.  Inside,  the 
palace  has  been  gorgeously  restored  since  a  great 
fire  by  which  it  was  terribly  injured  in  1859.  The 
chapel,  with  the  pew  of  Christian  IV. — i  bedekammer/ 
prayer  chamber,  it  is  called — is  most  curious.  There 
is  a  noble  series  of  the  pictures  of  the  native  artist 
Carl  Bloch,  recalling  the  works  of  Overbeck  in  their 
majesty  and  depth  of  feeling,  but  far  more  forcible. 

A  drive  of  four  miles  through  beech  woods  leads 
to  the  comfortable  later  palace  of  Fredensborg,  built 
as  '  A  Castle  of  Peace  '  by  Frederick  IV.  and  Louisa 
of  Mecklenbourg,  with  a  lovely  garden,  and  a  view  of 
the  Esrom  lake  down  green  glades,  in  one  of  which  is 
a  mysterious  assembly  of  stone  statues  in  Norwegian 
costumes. 

We  may  either  take  the  railway  or  drive  by  Gurre 
from  hence  to  Elsinore  (Helsingor),  where  the  great 


ELSINORE. 


79 


castle  of  Kronberg  rises,  with  many  towers  built  of 
grey  stone,  at  the  end  of  the  little  town  on  a  low 
promontory  jutting  out  into  the  sea.  Stately  avenues 
surround  its  bastions,  and  it  is  delightful  to  walk  upon 
the  platform  where  the  first  scene  of  Shakspere's 
'  Hamlet '  is  laid,  and  to  watch  the  numberless  ships  in 


CASTLE    OF    ELSINORE. 


the  narrow  Sound  which  divides  Denmark  and 
Sweden.  The  castle  is  in  perfect  preservation.  It 
was  formerly  used  as  a  palace.  Anne  of  Denmark 
was  married  here  by  proxy  to  James  VI.  of  Scotland, 
and  here  poor  Caroline  Matilda  sate  daily  for  hours  at 
her  prison  window  watching  vainly  for  the  fleet  of 
England  which   she   believed  was   coming    to    her 


So  IN  DENMARK. 

rescue.  Beyond  the  castle,  a  sandy  plain  reminding 
us  of  Scottish  links,  covered  with  bent-grass  and 
drifted  by  seaweed,  extends  to  Marienlyst,  a  little 
fashionable  bathing  place  embosomed  in  verdure. 
Here  a  Carmelite  convent  was  founded  by  the  wife 
of  Eric  IX.,  that  Queen  Philippa — daughter  of  Henry 
IV.  of  England — who  successfully  defended  Copen- 
hagen against  the  Hanseatic  League,  but  was  after- 
wards beaten  by  her  husband,  because  her  ships  were 
defeated  at  Stralsund,  an  indignity  which  drove  her 
to  a  monastic  life.  Hamlet's  Grave  and  Ophelia's 
Brook  are  shown  at  Marienlyst,  having  been  invented 
for  anxious  inquirers  by  the  complaisant  inhabitants. 
Alas !  both  were  unknown  to  Andersen,  who  lived 
here  in  his  childhood,  and  it  is  provoking  to  learn  that 
Hamlet  had  really  no  especial  connection  with 
Elsinore,  and  was  the  son  of  a  Jutland  pirate  in  the 
insignificant  island  of  Mors.  But  Denmark  is  the 
very  home  of  picturesque  stories,  which  are  kept  alive 
there  by  the  ballad  literature  of  the  land,  chiefly  of 
the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  centuries,  but  still  known 
to  rich  and  poor  alike  as  in  no  other  country.  For 
hundreds  of  years  these  poetical  histories  have  been 
the  tunes  to  which,  in  winter,  when  no  other  exercise 
can  be  taken,  people  dance  for  hours,  holding  each 
other's  hands  in  two  lines,  making  three  steps  forwards 


THE  SOUND. 


81 


and  backwards,  keeping  time,  balancing,  or  remaining 
still  for  a  moment,  as  they  sing  one  of  their  old  ballads 
or  its  refrain. 


TOWER    OF    HELSINGBORG    CHURCH. 


It  was  in  a  wild  evening,  with  huge  blue  foam- 
crested  waves  rushing  down  the  Sound,  that  we 
crossed  in  ten  minutes  to  Helsingborg  in  Sweden, 


82  IN  DENMARK. 

mounted  for  the  sunset  to  the  one  huge  remaining 
tower  of  its  castle,  and  sketched  as  typical  of  almost 
all  village  towers  in  Denmark  the  belfry  of  the  church 
\f  where  King  Eric  Menred  was  married  to  the  Swedish 

princess  Ingeborga. 


SWEDEN 


IN  SWEDEN. 

'  T  is  not  beautiful  in  Sweden,  but  it  is  very  pretty ; 
■*■  if  everything  were  not  so  very  much  alike,.,  it 
would  be  very  pretty  indeed.  The  whole  country  as 
far  north  as  Upsala  is  like  an  exaggerated  Surrey — 
little  hills  covered  with  fir-woods  and  bilberries, 
brilliant,  glistening  little  lakes  sleeping  in  sandy 
hollows,  but  all  just  like  one  another. 

We  turned  aside  in  our  way  from  Helsingborg  to 
the  north  to  visit  the  old  university  of  Lund,  the 
Oxford  of  Sweden,  a  sleepy  city,  where  the  students 
lead  a  separate  life  in  lodgings  of  their  own,  only 
being  united  in  the  public  lectures  ;  for  in  Sweden,  as 
in  Italy,  the  taking  of  a  degree  only  proves  that  the 
graduates  have  passed  a  certain  number  of  examina- 
tions, not,  as  in  England,  that  they  have  lived 
together  for  three  years  at  least,  forming  their  char- 
acter and  taste  by  mutual  companionship  and 
intimacy.  The  cathedral  of  Lund  is  a  most  noble 
Norman  building,  with  giants  and  dwarfs  sculptured 


S6 


IN  SWEDEN. 


against  the  pillars  of  its  grand  crypt,  and  a  glorious 
archbishop's  tomb,  green  and  mossy  with  damp. 

An  immense  railway  journey,  by  day  and  night 
through  the  endless  forests,  brought  us  to  Stockholm, 
where  we  arrived  in  the  early  morning.  Though  the 
town  is  little  beyond  an  ugly  collection  of  featureless 
modern  streets,  the  situation  is  quite  exquisite,  for  the 


2?« 


THE  JUNCTION  OF  LAKE  MALAR  AND  THE  BALTIC,  STOCKHOLM. 


city  occupies  a  succession  of  islets  between  Lake 
Malar  and  the  Baltic,  surrounding,  on  a  central  isle, 
the  huge  Palace  built  from  stately  designs  of  Count 
Tessin  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  and  the  old 
church    of  Riddarholmen,  where  Gustavus  Adolphus 


STOCKHOLM.  87 

and    many  other  royal  persons  repose  beneath  the 
banner-hung  arches. 

It  sounds  odd,  but,  next  to  the  Palace,  the  most 
imposing  building  in  Stockholm  is  certainly  the  Grand 
Hotel  Rydberg,  which  is  most  comfortable  and 
economical,  in  spite  of  its  palatial  aspect.  There  is 
no  table  d'hote,  and  everything  is  paid  for  at  the  time, 
in  the  excellent  restaurant  on  the  first  floor  of  the 
hotel.  Here,  a  side  table  is  always  covered  with 
dainties  peculiarly  Swedish,  corn  and  birch  brandy, 
and  different  kinds  of  potted  fish,  with  fresh  butter 
and  olives,  and  it  is  the  universal  custom  in  Sweden 
to  attack  the  side  table  before  sitting  down  to  the 
regular  dinner.  The  rooms  in  the  hotel  are  excellent, 
and  their  front  windows  overlook  all  that  is  most 
characteristic  in  Stockholm — the  glorious  view  down 
the  fiord  of  the  Baltic :  its  farther  hilly  bank  covered 
with  houses  and  churches  ;  the  bridge  at  the  junction 
of  the  Baltic  and  Lake  Malar,  which  is  the  centre  of 
life  in  the  capital,  and  the  little  pleasure  garden  be- 
low, where  hundreds  of  people  are  constantly  eating 
and  drinking  under  the  trees,  and  whence  strains  of 
music  are  wafted  late  into  the  summer  night ;  the 
mighty  palace  dominating  the  principal  island,  and 
the  little  steam  gondolas,  filled  with  people,  which 
dart  and  hiss  through  the  waters  from  one  island  to 


88  IN  SWEDEN. 

another.  In  Stockholm,  where  waters  are  many  and 
bridges  few,  these  steam  gondolas  are  the  chief  means 
of  communication,  and  we  made  great  use  of  them, 
the  passages  costing  twelve  oere,  or  one  penny.  The 
great  white  sea-gulls,  poising  over  the  water-streets  or 
floating  upon  the  waves,  are  also  a  striking  feature. 

The  museums  of  Stockholm  have  little  to  call  for 
any  especial  notice,  except  a  grand  statue  of  the 
sleeping  Endymion  from  the  Villa  Adriana,  and  the 
curious  collection  of  royal  clothes  down  to  the  present 
date,  a  gallery  of  costume  like  that  which  once 
existed  in  London  at  the  Tower  Royal.  The  chief 
curiosity  which  the  Swedish  collection  contains  is  the 
hat  worn  by  Charles  XII.  when  he  was  killed,  in 
which  the  upward  progress  of  the  bullet  can  be  traced, 
proving  that  the  king's  death  was  caused  by  an 
assassin,  and  not  the  result  of  a  chance  shot  from  the 
walls  of  Frederikshald.  No  especial  features  mark 
the  interior  of  the  Palace,  though  the  Royal  Stable 
for  a  hundred  and  forty-six  horses  is  worthy  of  a  visit ; 
and  the  churches  are  uninteresting,  except  perhaps 
S.  Nicholas,  the  coronation  church,  which  contains 
the  helmet  and  spurs  of  S.  Olaf,  stolen  from 
Throndtjem.  Riddarholmen  can  scarcely  be  regarded 
as  a  church  ;  it  is  rather  a  great  sepulchral  hall  hung 
with  trophies,  having  a  few  tombs  on  the  floor  of  the 


STOCKHOLM.  89 

building,  and  vaults  opening  under  the  side  walls,  in 
which  the  different  groups  of  royal  persons  are  buried 
together  in  families.  Under  a  chapel  on  the  left  lies 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  the  justly  popular  great-grandson 
of  Gustavus  Wasa,  who  fell  at  the  battle  of  Lutzen, 
and  who,  as  soldier,  general,  and  king,  ever  knew  true 
merit,  and  laboured  for  the  glory  of  his  country 
rather  than  for  his  own.  In  the  opposite  chapel 
repose  the  present  royal  family,  descendants  of 
Bernadotte,  Prince  of  Pontecorvo,  the  only  one  of 
Napoleon's  generals  whose  dynasty  still  occupies  a 
throne.  He  began  life  as  a  common  soldier,  and  his 
election  as  Charles  XIV.  of  Sweden  was  chiefly  due 
to  the  kindness  with  which  he  treated  Swedish 
prisoners  taken  in  the  Pomeranian  wars.  But  the 
Swedes  have  never  had  cause  to  repent  of  their  choice, 
and  their  reigning  house  is  probably  the  most  popular 
in  Europe.  The  coffins  of  those  members  of  the 
royal  family  who  have  died  within  the  memory  of 
men  are  ever  laden  with  fresh  flowers. 

Close  by  the  Riddarholmen  Church  is  the  most 
picturesque  bit  of  street  architecture  in  Stockholm, 
where  a  statue  of  Burger  Jarl,  the  traditional  founder 
of  the  town,  forms  a  foreground  to  the  chapel  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus  and   one  of   the  many  bridges. 

In  saying  that  Stockholm  is  not  picturesque  one 


9o 


IN  SWEDEN. 


may  seem  to  have  spoken  disparagingly,  but,  never- 
theless, it  is  perfectly  charming :  there  is  so  much  life 
and  movement  upon  its  blue  waters,  and  its  many 
little  public  gardens  give  such  a  gay  aspect  to  the 
buildings.     Of  these,  the  chief  is  the  Kongstr'agarden, 


RIDDARHOLMEN,    STOCKHOLM. 


surrounding  a  statue  of  Charles  XIII.,  where  the 
pleasant  Cafe  Blanche  is  filled  all  the  evening  with 
an  animated  crowd,  gossiping  and  eating  ices  under 
the  verandah  and  shrubberies,  and  listening  to  the 
music.  While  we  were  staying  in  Stockholm  a 
hundred  Upsala  students  came  in  their  white  caps  to 


ROSEN  DAL  AND    ULRIKSDAL.  91 

sing  national  melodies  in  the  Catherina  Church.  We 
lived  through  two  hours  of  fearful  heat  to  hear  them, 
and  most  beautiful  it  was.  King  Oscar  II.  was  present 
— a  noble  royal  figure  and  handsome  face.  He  is  the 
ideal  sovereign  of  the  age — artist,  poet,  musician, 
student,  equally  at  home  in  ancient  and  modern 
languages,  profoundly  versed  in  all  his  duties,  and 
nobly  performing  them. 

We  had  intended  going  often,  as  the  natives  do,  to 
dine  amongst  the  trees  and  flowers  at  Hasselbacken, 
in  the  Djurgarden,  a  wooded  promontory,  to  which 
little  steamers  are  always  plying,  but,  alas !  during 
eight  of  the  ten  July  days  we  spent  at  Stockholm  it 
rained  incessantly.  We  were  so  cold  that  we  were 
thankful  for  all  the  winter  clothes  we  brought  with  us, 
and  were  filled  with  pity  for  the  poor  Swedes  in  being 
cheated  out  of  their  short  summer,  of  which  every 
day  is  precious.  The  streets  were  always  sopping, 
but,  in  the  covered  gondolas,  we  managed  several  ex- 
cursions to  quiet,  damp  palaces  on  the  banks  of  lonely 
fiords — Rosendal,  remarkable  for^a  grand  porphyry 
vase  in  a  brilliant  little  flower  garden  ;  and  Ulriksdal, 
with  its  clipped  avenues  and  melancholy  creek. 

Our  limited  knowledge  of  Swedish  often  caused 
us  to  embark  in  amusing  ignorance  as  to  whither  we 
were  going,  and  led  us  into  many  a  surprise.     One 


92  IN  SWEDEN. 

day  we  set  off,  intending  to  goto  Drottningholm,  but, 
on  reaching  the  quay,  found  the  steamer  just  gone. 
At  that  moment  such  a  fearful  storm  of  rain  came  on 
that  we  were  obliged  to  rush  for  shelter  wherever  we 
could,  and  the  nearest  point  of  refuge  was  the  deck 
of  the  steamer  Mary,  which  instantly  started.  We 
feared  we  might  be  bound  for  the  Baltic,  and,  failing 
to  make  any  one  understand  us,  resolved  to  disembark 
at  the  first  landing-place.  But  then  the  rain  was 
worse  than  ever,  and  we  allowed  ourselves  to  be 
carried  on  down  Lake  Malar,  till  our  boat  turned  into 
a  little  creek,  and  landed  us  on  the  pier  of  a  manu- 
facturing town.  We  had  not  reached  the  end  of  the 
pier,  however,  before  the  rain  came  on  again  in  such 
convulsive  torrents  that  we  fled  back  to  the  Mary, 
which  again  started  on  its  travels,  and  this  time,  after 
stopping  at  many  little  ports,  conveyed  us  back  to 
Stockholm.  When  we  asked  the  captain  what  we 
were  to  pay  for  our  voyage,  he  said,  '  Oh,  nothing ; ' 
and  very  much  amused  he  and  his  crew  seemed  to  be 
^y  our  ignorance  and  adventures. 

We  had  a  fine  day  for  our  excursion  by  railway  to 
Upsala,  whence  we  hired  a  little  carriage  to  take  us  on 
to  Old  Upsala,  about  three  miles  distant.  A  drive 
across  a  dull,  marshy  plain  brings  one  to  a  delightfully 
wild  district  of  downs,  covered  with  hundreds  of  little 


OLD    UP  SAL  A.  93 

sepulchral  mounds  like  Wiltshire  barrows,  amid  which 
three  great  tumuli,  standing  close  together,  are  said  to 
mark  the  graves  of  Odin,  Thor,  and  Freya — heroes  in 
their  lifetime,  gods  in  their  death.  Close  beside  them 
for  centuries  rose  the  temple  which  was  the  most 
sacred  shrine  of  Scandinavian  worship.  It  glittered 
all  over  with  gold,  and  a  golden  chain,  nine  hundred 
ells  in  circumference,  ran  round  its  roof.  In  the 
temple  were  three  statues,  around  which  hovered  all 
the  principal  mythological  traditions  of  the  north. 
The  central  figure  was  that  of  Odin  or  Wodan,  the 
wizard-king,  who  is  said  to  have  come  in  the  dawn  of 
Swedish  history  from  his  domains  of  Asia,  which  ex- 
tended from  the  Euxine  to  the  Caspian,  and  whose 
capital  was  Asgard.  He  landed  in  Funen,  where  he 
founded  Odense,  and  left  his  son  Skjold  as  a  sovereign. 
Thence  he  passed  into  Sweden,  and  established  his 
government  at  Sigtuna,  not  far  from  Upsala.  His 
existence  is  affirmed  by  the  Saxon  Chronicle.  He 
was  called  *  the  Father  of  Victory,'  for  if  he  laid  his 
hands  on  the  heads  of  his  generals,  and  predicted 
their  success  when  they  went  out  to  battle,  that 
success  never  failed  them.  He  was  also,  says  Snorro 
Sturlesen,  i  the  Father  of  all  the  arts  of  modern 
Europe.'  Tradition  has  endowed  him  with  every 
miraculous   power.     He    could   change  his  looks  at 


94  IN  SWEDEN. 

pleasure — to  his  friends  most  beautiful,  but  a  demon 
to  his  enemies.  By  his  eloquence  he  captivated  all 
who  heard  him,  and  as  he  always  spoke  in  verse  he 
was  called  '  the  Artificer  of  Song.'  His  verses  were 
endowed  with  such  magic  power  that  they  could  strike 
his  enemies  with  blindness  or  deafness,  or  could  blunt 
their  weapons.  To  listen  to  the  sweetness  of  his 
music  even  the  ghosts  would  come  forth  arid  the 
mountains  would  unfold  their  inmost  recesses.  He 
was  the  inventor  of  Runic  characters.  He  could 
slaughter  thousands  at  a  blow,  and  he  could  render 
his  own  followers  invulnerable.  At  his  will  he  could 
assume  the  form  of  beasts  ;  at  his  word  the  fire  would 
cease  to  burn,  the  wind  to  blow,  or  the  sea  to  rage. 
If  he  hurled  his  spear  between  two  armies,  it  secured 
victory  to  those  on  whose  side  it  fell.  The  dwarfs 
(Lapps)  had  built  for  him  a  ship  called  Skidbladner ', 
in  which  he  could  cross  the  most  dangerous  seas 
with  safety  ;  but  when  he  did  not  want  to  use  it,  he 
could  fold  it  up  like  a  handkerchief.  Everything  was 
known  to  Odin,  for  did  he  not  possess  the  mummified 
head  of  his  enemy  Mimir,  which  was  all-wise,  and 
he  had  only  to  consult  it  ?  Yet,  with  all  these  gifts 
and  attributes,  Odin  remained  human ;  he  had  no 
power  over  death.  When  he  felt  his  end  approaching 
he  assembled  all  his  friends  and  followers,  and,  giving 


THE   GRAVES  OF   THE   GODS. 


95 


himself  nine  wounds  in  a  circle,  allowed  himself  to 
bleed  to  death.  The  body  of  the  great  chieftain  was 
burnt,  and  his  ashes  were  buried  under  the  mound  of 
Upsala  ;  but  his  spirit  was  believed  to  have  gone  back 
to  the  marvellous  home  in  the  Valhalla  of  Asgard,  of 
which  he  had  so  often  spoken,  and  whither  he  had 
always  said  that  he  should  return.     Henceforward  it 


THE   GRAVES   OF  THE   GODS. 


was  considered  that  all  blessings  and  mercies  were 
gifts  sent  by  Odin.  The  younger  Edda  tells  that  all 
who  die  in  battle  are  Odin's  adopted  children.  The 
Valkyriae  pick  them  out  upon  the  battle-field  and 
conduct  them  to  the  Valhalla,  where  they  have  per- 
petual life  in  the  halls  of  Odin.  Their  days  are  spent 
in  hunting  or  the  joys  of  imaginary  combats,  and  they 


96  IN  SWEDEN. 

return  at  night  to  feast  upon  the  inexhaustible  flesh  of 
the  boar  Sahrimnir,  and  to  drink,  out  of  horn  cups,  the 
mead  formed  from  the  milk  of  a  single  goat,  which  is 
strong  enough  nightly  to  intoxicate  all  the  heroes. 
Huge  logs  constantly  burn  within  the  palace  of  Odin, 
for  warmth  is  the  northern  idea  of  heaven,  while  in 
their  hell  it  is  eternal  winter.  When  a  Scandinavian 
chieftain  died  in  battle,  not  only  were  his  war-horse 
and  all  his  gold  and  silver  placed  upon  his  funeral- 
pyre,  but  all  his  followers  slew  themselves  that  he 
might  enter  the  halls  of  Odin  properly  attended. 
The  more  glorious  the  chieftain  the  greater  the  num- 
ber who  must  accompany  him  to  Valhalla.  To  rejoin 
Odin  in  Asgard  became  the  height  of  a  warrior's 
ambition.  It  is  recorded  of  Ragnar  Lodbrok  that 
when  he  was  dying  no  word  of  lamentation  was 
heard  from  him  :  on  the  contrary,  he  was  transported 
with  joy  as  he  thought  of  the  feast  preparing  for  him 
in  Odin's  palace.  '  Soon,  soon,'  he  exclaimed,  i  I 
shall  be  seated  in  the  pleasant  habitation  of  the  gods, 
and  drinking  mead  out  of  carved  horns  !  A  brave 
man  does  not  dread  death,  and  I  shall  utter  no  word 
of  fear  as  I  enter  the  halls  of  Odin.'  But  stranger 
than  all  the  legends  concerning  Odin  is  the  fact  that 
his  memory  is  still  so  far  fresh  that  '  Go  to  Odin  ' 
is  yet  used  by  the  common  people  where  an  uncivil 


THE   GRAVES  OE   THE   GODS.  97 

wish  as  to  the  lower  regions  would  find  expression 
in  England.  The  fourth  day  of  the  week  still  com- 
memorates Odin  or  Wodan — in  old  Norse  Odinsdgr, 
in  Swedish  and  Danish  Onsdag,  in  English  Wednes- 
day. 

On  the  right  hand  of  Odin,  in  the  temple  of  Up- 
sala,  sate  the  statue  of  Freyja,  or  Freyer,  represented 
as  a  hermaphrodite,  with  the  attributes  of  productive- 
ness. Freyja  was  the  goddess  of  love,  who  rode  in 
a  car  drawn  by  wild  cats.  She  knew  beforehand  all 
that  would  happen,  and  divided  the  souls  of  the  dead 
with  Odin.  She  is  commemorated  in  the  sixth  day 
of  the  week,  that  Freytag  or  Freyja's  Day  which  in 
Latin  is  Dies  Veneris,  or  Venus'  Day. 

On  the  left  of  Odin  sate  Thor,  who,  says  the  Edda, 
was  '  the  most  valiant  of  the  sons  of  Odin.'  He  was 
the  offspring  of  Odin  and  Frigga, i  the  mother  of  the 
gods,'  and  the  brother  of  '  Balder  the  Beautiful.'  As 
the  defender  and  avenger  of  the  gods,  he  was  repre- 
sented as  carrying  the  hammer  with  which  he  de- 
stroyed the  giants,  and  which  always  returned  to  his 
hand  when  he  threw  it.  He  wore  iron  gauntlets,  and 
had  a  girdle  which  doubled  his  strength  when  he  put 
it  on.  The  fifth  day  of  the  week  was  sacred  to  Thor, 
in  old  Norse  Th6rsdag,  in  Swedish  and  Danish  Tors- 
dag,  in  English  Thursday ;  in  Latin  Dies  Jovis,  for 


98  IN  SWEDEN. 

Jupiter,  the  God  of  Thunder,  had  the  same  attributes 
as  Thor. 

There  were  three  great  festivals  at  Upsala,  when 
multitudes  flocked  to  the  temple  to  consult  its  famous 
oracles  or  to  sacrifice.  The  first  was  the  winter  festival 
of  '  Mother  Night ' — saturnalia  in  honour  of  Frey,  or 
the  sun,  to  invoke  the  blessings  of  a  fruitful  year  ;  the 
second  feast  was  in  honour  of  the  Earth  ;  the  third 
was  in  honour  of  Odin,  to  propitiate  the  Father  of 
Battles.  Every  ninth  year,  at  least,  the  king  and  all 
persons  of  distinction  were  expected  to  appear  before 
the  great  temple,  and  nine  victims  were  chosen  for 
human  sacrifice — captives  in  time  of  war,  slaves  in 
time  of  peace — \  I  send  thee  to  Odin  '  being  the  con- 
solatory last  words  spoken  to  each  as  he  fell.  If  public 
calamities  had  been  caused  by  any  royal  mismanage- 
ment, the  people  chose  their  king  as  a  sacrifice ;  thus 
the  first  king  of  the  petty  province  of  Vermeland  was 
burnt  to  appease  Odin  during  a  famine.  It  is  also 
recorded  that  King  Aun  sacrificed  his  nine  sons  to 
obtain  a  prolongation  of  his  own  life.  The  victims 
were  either  hewn  down  or  burnt  in  the  temple  itself, 
or  hung  in  the  grove  adjoining — '  Odin's  Grove  ' — of 
which  every  leaf  was  sacred.  Still,  according  to  the 
Voluspa,  the  famous  prophecy  of  Vela,  at  the  end  of 
the  world  even  Odin,  with  all  the  other  pagan  deities 


OLD    UPSALA. 


99 


will  perish  in  the  general  chaos,  when  a  new  earth  of 
celestial  beauty  will  arise  upon  the  ruins  of  the 
old. 

One  of  the  most  curious  little  churches  in  Chris- 
tendom now  stands  upon  the  site  of  the  ancient  tem- 
ple.    The  apse   is  evidently  built   out  of  the   pagan 


THE   CHURCH   OF  OLD    UPSALA. 


sanctuary.  The  belfry,  Swedish-fashion,  is  detached, 
built  of  massive  timbers  and  painted  bright  red. 
There  are  scarcely  any  human  habitations  near,  only 
the  mighty  barrows,  overgrown  with  wild  thyme  and 
a  thousand  other  flowers,  which  rise  over  the  graves  of 
the  gods.     In  the  tomb  of  Odin  the  Government  still 


ioo  IN  SWEDEN. 

gives  the  mead,  which  was  the  nectar  of  Scandinavian 
heroes,  to  pilgrim  visitors. 

Like  most  of  the  Swedish  towns,  Upsala  is  disap- 
pointing, and  its  mean,  ill-paved  streets  show  few  signs 
of  antiquity.  At  the  east  end  of  the  cathedral  is  the 
lofty  tomb  of  Gustavus  Wasa,  the  first  Protestant 
King  of  Sweden,  whose  effigy  lies  between  the  charm- 
ing figures  of  his  two  pretty  little  wives.  In  15 19  he 
was  carried  off  as  a  hostage  by  that  Christian,  King 
of  Denmark,  who  forcibly  made  himself  King  of 
Sweden  also,  and  ruled  with  savage  tyranny.  Es- 
caping to  Lubeck,  he  headed  a  revolutionary  party 
against  the  tyrant,  and,  after  many  defeats,  succeeded 
in  taking  Stockholm,  where  he  was  made  king  in  1523. 
Soon  after,  Olaf  Petri's  translation  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment led  to  the  Reformation  in  Sweden,  where  Gus- 
tavus Wasa  was  another  Henry  VIII.,  in  taking  the 
opportunity  of  seizing  two-thirds  of  the  Church 
revenues,  and  depriving  all  ecclesiastics  of  their  in- 
comes if  they  refused  to  embrace  Lutheranism.  One 
of  his  daughters-in-law  was  the  famous  Polish  princess, 
Queen  Catherine  Jagellonica,  who  tried  hard  to  upset 
the  new  religion,  and  inculcated  Catholicism  upon  her 
son,  King  Sigismund,  who  was  deposed,  on  religious 
grounds,  in  favour  of  his  uncle,  Charles  IX.,  the  father 
of  Gustavus  Adolphus.     This  Queen  Catherine  Jagel- 


GRIPSHOLM. 


101 


lonica  has  a  fine  tomb  in  a  side  chapel  of  Upsala 
Cathedral. 

On  a  brilliant  July  morning  we  embarked  at  Stock- 
holm in  the  steamer  which  runs  twice  a  week  down 
Lake  Malar  to  Gripsholm.     Most  lovely  were  the  long 


GRIPSHOLM. 


reaches  of  still  water  with  their  fringe  of  russet  rocks, 
every  crevice  tufted  with  birch  and  dwarf  mountain 
ash,  opening  here  and  there  to  show  some  red  timber 
houses  or  a  wooden  spire.  It  was  several  hours  of 
soft  diorama,  with  the  music  of  the  pines,  before  the 
great  castle  of  Gripsholm,  the  Windsor  of  Sweden, 


io2  IN  SWEDEN. 

came  in  sight,  with  its  many  red  towers  and  Eastern- 
looking  domes  and  cupolas.  We  were  landed  at  the 
little  pier  of  Mariefred,  in  itself  a  lovely  scene,  with 
old  trees  feathering  into  the  water,  and  a  picturesque 
church  rising  in  a  grove  of  walnuts  on  a  green  hill 
behind.  Hard  by  is  a  little  inn  where  the  whole  of 
the  passengers  in  the  steamer  dined  together,  at  many 
little  tables,  the  great  staple  of  food  being  fresh  trout 
and  salmon  of  the  lake,  the  bilberries  and  cloudberries 
of  the  rocks,  and  the  birch  brandy  and  wild  straw- 
berries from  the  woods.  After  dinner  every  one 
trooped  along  the  meadow  paths  to  the  castle,  and 
rambled  in  friendly  companionship  over  its  numerous 
rooms,  full  of  interest,  and  with  many  curious  royal 
portraits  and  pieces  of  ancient  furniture.  There  are 
endless  historic  recollections  connected  with  Grips- 
holm,  but  they  centre  for  the  most  part  around  the 
sons  of  Gustavus  Wasa.  Of  these,  John  was  im- 
mured here  by  Eric  XIV.,  with  his  wife  Catherine 
Jagellonica,  who,  during  her  imprisonment,  gave 
birth  to  her  son  Sigismund  (afterwards  Sigismund 
III.  of  Polland),  in  a  box-bed  which  still  remains. 
Eric  intended  to  have  put  his  brother  to  death,  but 
when  he  entered  his  cell  for  the  purpose  was  so 
overcome  by  -fraternal  feeling  that  he  begged  his 
pardon  instead.     That  pardon  was  not  granted,  for 


GRIPSHOLM.  103 

when  John  got  the  upper  hand  he  imprisoned  Eric 
in  a  small  chamber  at  the  top  of  the  castle,  where 
he  languished  for  ten  years,  during  which  he  wrote 
a  treatise  on  military  art,  and  translated  the  history 
of  Johannes  Magnus,  and  where — in  the  end — he 
was  poisoned. 


NORWAY 


IN  NORWAY. 

HP* HE  weather  changed  to  a  cloudless  sunshine, 
*■  which  hatched  all  the  mosquitoes,  as  we  entered 
Norway  in  the  second  week  in  July,  and  the  heat  was 
so  intense  that,  in  the  long  railway  journey  from 
Stockholm,  we  were  very  thankful  for  the  little  tank 
of  iced  water  with  which  each  railway  carriage  is 
provided.  We  were  disappointed  in  Kristiania,  which 
is  a  very  dull  place.  The  town  was  built  by  Christian 
IV.  of  Denmark,  and  has  a  good  central  church  of 
his  time,  but  it  is  utterly  unpicturesque.  In  the 
picture  gallery  are  several  noble  works  of  Tidemann, 
the  special  painter  of  expression  and  pathos.  As  a 
companion  for  life  is  the  memory  of  a  picture  which 
represents  the  administration  of  the  last  sacrament 
to  an  old  peasant,  whose  wife's  grief  is  turned  to  res- 
ignation, which  ceases  even  to  have  a  wish  for  his 
retention,  as  she  beholds  the  heaven-born  comfort 
with  which  he  is  looking  into  an  unknown  future. 
Another  of  the  finest  works  of  the  artist  represents 


io8  IN  NORWAY. 

the  reception  of  the  sacrament  by  a  convict,  young 
and  deeply  repentant,  before  his  execution. 

There  is  no  striking  scenery  in  the  environs  of 
Kristiania,  but  they  are  wonderfully  pretty.  From  the 
avenues  upon  the  ramparts  you  look  down  over  the 
broad  expanse  of  the  fyord,  with  low  blue  mountain 
distances.  Little  steamers  dart  backwards  and  for- 
wards, and  convey  visitors  in  a  few  minutes  across 
the  bay  to  Oscars  Halle,  a  tower  and  small  country 
villa  of  the  king  on  a  wooded  knoll. 

We  went  by  the  railway  which  winds  high  amongst 
the  hills  to  Kongsberg,  a  mining  village  in  a  lofty 
situation.  Here,  in  a  garden  of  white  roses,  there 
is  a  most  comfortable  small  hotel  kept  by  a  Dane, 
which  is  a  capital  starting-point  for  all  expeditions 
in  Telemarken.  There  is  a  pretty  waterfall  near  the 
village,  and  the  church  should  be  visited,  for  the  sake 
of  its  curious  pulpit  hour-glass — indeed,  four  glasses — 
quarter,  half-hour,  three-quarters,  hour — and  the  top 
of  a  stool  let  into  the  wall  with  an  inscription  saying 
that  Mr.  Jacobus  Stuart,  King  of  Scotland  (James  I. 
of  England),  sate  upon  it,  Nov.  25,  1859,  to  hear  a 
sermon  preached  by  Mr.  David  Lentz,  '  between  1 1 
and  12/  on  '  The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd/ 

We  engaged  a  carriage  at  Kongsberg  for  the 
excursion  to  Tinoset,  whence  we  arranged  to  go  on 


KONGSBERG.  109 

to  the  Ryukan  Foss,  said  to  be  the  highest  waterfall 
in  Europe.  We  do  not  advise  future  travellers  with- 
out unlimited  time  to  follow  us  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  expedition  by  the  lake,  but  the  carriage  excursion 
is  quite  enchanting.  What  an  exquisite  drive  it  is 
through  the  forest — the  deep  ever-varying  woods  of 
noble  pines  and  firs  springing  from  luxuriant  thickets 
of  junipers,  bilberries,  and  cranberries  !  The  loveliest 
mountain  flowers  grow  in  these  woods — huge  lark- 
spurs of  rank  luxuriant  foliage  and  flowers  of  faint 
dead  blue ;  pinks  and  blue  lungworts  and  orchids ; 
stagmoss  wreathing  itself  round  the  grey  rocks,  and 
delicate,  lovely  soldanella  drooping  in  the  still  recesses. 
Our  midday  halt  was  at  Bolkesjo,  where  the  forest 
opens  to  green  lawns,  hill-set,  with  a  charming  view 
down  the  smooth  declivities  to  a  many-bayed  lake, 
with  mountain  distances.  Here,  amid  a  group  of  old 
brown  farm-buildings  covered  with  rude  paintings  and 
sculpture,  is  a  farmhouse,  inhabited  by  the  same 
family  through  many  generations.  It  is  one  of  the 
1  stations  '  where  it  is  part  of  the  duty  of  the  farmer  or 
i  bonder '  who  is  owner  of  the  soil  to  find  horses  for 
the  use  of  travellers.  These  horses  are  supplied  at  a 
very  trifling  charge,  and  are  brought  back  by  a  boy 
who  sits  behind  the  carriole  or  carriage  upon  the  port- 
manteau :  but  as  the  horses,  when  not  called  for,  are 


no  IN  NORWAY. 

turned  loose  or  used  by  the  bonder  in  his  own  farm 
or  field  work,  travellers  generally  have  to  wait  a  long 
time  while  they  are  caught  or  sent  for.  They  order 
their  horses  '  strax ' — directly — one  of  the  first  words 
an  Englishman  learns  to  use  on  entering  Norway,  yet 
they  scarcely  ever  appear  before  half  an  hour,  so  that 
Norwegians  repeat  with  amusement  the  story  of  an 
Englishman  who,  when  he  wished  to  spend  an  hour 
at  a  station,  ordered  his  horses  i  after  two  strax's.' 
These  halts  are  not  -  always  congenial  to  English 
impatience,  yet  they  give  opportunities  of  becoming 
acquainted  with  Norwegian  life  and  people  which  can 
be  obtained  in  no  other  way,  and  recollection  will 
oftener  go  back  to  the  quiet  time  spent  in  waiting 
for  horses  amid  the  grey  rocks  above  some  foaming 
streamlet,  in  the  green  oases  surrounded  by  forest,  or 
in  clean-boarded  rooms  strewn  with  fresh  fir  foliage, 
than  to  the  more  established  sights  of  Norway.  Most 
delicious  indeed  were  the  two  hours  which  we  passed 
at  Bolkesjo,  in  the  high  pastures  where  the  peasants 
were  mowing  the  tall  grass  ablaze  with  flowers,  and 
the  mountains  were  throwing  long  purple  shadows 
over  the  forest,  and  the  wind  blowing  freshly  from  the 
gleaming  lake — and  then,  most  delicious  was  the 
well-earned  meal  of  eggs  and  bacon,  strawberries  and 
cream,  and  other  homely  dainties  in  the  farmhouse 


BOLKESJO. 


in 


where  the  beams  and  furniture  were  all  painted  and 
carved  with  mottoes  and  texts,  and  the  primitive  box- 
beds  had  crimson  satin  quilts.  Portraits  sent  by  well- 
pleased  royal  visitors  hung  on  the  walls  side  by  side 
with  common-coloured  scripture  prints,  like  those 
which  are  found  in  English  cottages.  The  cellar  is 
under  a  bed,  beneath  which  it  was  funny  to  see  the 


•       ^^sgSPfro 


BOLKESjO. 


old  farmeress  disappear  as  she  went  down  to  fetch  up 
for  us  her  home-brewed  ale. 

With  the  cordial  '  likkelie  reise*  of  our  old  hostess 
in  our  ears,  we  left  Bolkesjo  full  of  pleasant  thoughts. 
But  what  roads,  or  rather  what  want  of  roads,  lead  to 
Tinoset ! — there  were  banks  of  glassy  rock,  up  which 
our  horses  scrambled  like  cats ;  there  were  awful 
moments  when  everything  seemed  to  come  to  an  end, 


iiz  IN  NORWAY, 

and  when  they  gathered  up  their  legs,  and  seemed  to 
fling  themselves  down  headlong  with  the  carriage  on 
the  top  of  them,  and  yet  we  reached  the  bottom  of 
the  abyss  buried  in  dust,  to  rise  gasping  and  gulping 
and  wondering  we  were  alive,  to  begin  the  same 
pantomime  over  again. 

Late  in  the  evening,  long  after  the  sunlight  had 
faded,  and  when  the  forests  seemed  to  have  gone  to 
sleep  and  all  sounds  were  silent,  we  reached  Tinoset. 
The  inn  is  a  wooden  chalet  on  the  banks  of  a  lake 
with  a  single  great  pine-tree  close  to  the  door.  It  was 
terribly  crowded,  and  the  little  wooden  cells  were  the 
smallest  apology  for  bedrooms,  where  all  through  the 
night  we  heard  the  winds  howling  among  the  moun- 
tains, and  the  waves  lashing  the  shore  under  the 
windows.  In  the  morning  the  lake  was  covered  with 
huge  blue  waves  crested  with  foam,  and  we  were 
almost  sorry  when  the  steamer  came  and  we  felt 
obliged  to  embark,  because,  as  it  was  not  the  regular 
day  for  its  passage,  we  had  summoned  it  at  some 
expense  from  the  other  end  of  the  lake.  We  were 
thoroughly  wet  with  the  spray  before  we  reached  the 
little  inn  at  Strand,  with  a  pier  where  we  disembarked, 
and  occupied  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  in  drawing  the 
purple  hills,  and  the  road  winding  towards  them 
through  the   old  birch-trees.     An   excursion  to   the 


HITTERDAL. 


i*3 


Ryukan  Foss  occupied  the  next  day ;  a  dull  drive 
through  the  plain,  and  then  an  exciting  skirting  of 
horrible  precipices,  followed  by  a  clamber  up  a 
mountain  pathlet  to  a  chalet,  where  we  were  thankful 
for  our  well-earned  dinner  of  trout  and  ale  before 
proceeding    to  the  Foss,  the  560-feet-high  fall  of  a 


OLD   CHURCH    OF   HITTERDAL. 


mountain  torrent  into  a  black  rift  in  the  hills — a 
boiling,  roaring  abyss  of  water,  with  drifts  of  spray 
which  are  visible  for  miles  before  it  can  be  seen 
itself. 

In  returning  from  Tinoset,  we  took  the  way  by 
Hitterdal,  the  date-forgotten  old  wooden  church  so 


ii4  IN  NORWAY. 

familiar  from  picture-books.  It  had  been  our  principal 
object  in  coming  to  Norway,  yet  the  long  drive  had 
made  us  so  ravenous  in  search  of  food  that  we 
could  only  endure  to  stay  there  half  an  hour.  The 
church,  however,  is  most  intensely  picturesque,  rising 
with  an  infinity  of  quaintest  domes  and  spires,  all 
built  of  timber,  out  of  a  rude  cloister  painted  red,  the 
whole  having  the  appearance  of  a  very  tall  Chinese 
pagoda,  yet  only  measuring  altogether  84  feet  by  57. 
The  belfry,  Norwegian-wise,  stands  alone  on  the  other 
side  of  the  churchyard,  which  is  overgrown  with  pink 
willow-herb.  When  we  reached  the  inn,  as  famished 
as  wolves  in  winter,  we  were  told  by  our  landlady 
that  she  could  not  give  us  any  dinner.  '  Nei,  nei,'  no- 
thing would  induce  her — she  had  too  much  work  on 
her  hands  already — perhaps,  however,  the  woman  at 
the  house  with  the  flag  would  give  us  some.  So, 
hungry  and  faint,  we  walked  forth  again  to  a  house 
which  had  a  flag  flying  in  front  of  it,  where  all  was 
silent  and  deserted,  except  for  a  dog  who  received  us 
furiously.  Having  pacified  him,  and  finding  the  front 
door  locked,  we  made  good  our  entrance  at  the  back, 
examined  the  kitchen,  peeped  into  all  the  cupboards, 
lifted  up  the  lids  of  all  the  saucepans,  and  not  till  we 
had  searched  every  corner  for  food  ineffectually,  were 
met  by  the  pretty,  pleasant-looking  young  lady  of  the 


HITTERDAL. 


115 


house,  who  informed  us  in  excellent  English,  and 
with  no  small  surprise  at  our  conduct,  that  we  had 
been  committing  a  raid  upon  her  private  residence. 
Afterwards  we  discovered  a  lonely  farmhouse,  where 
there  had  once  been  a  flag,  and  where  they  gave  us  a 
very  good  dinner,  ending  in  a  great  bowl  of  cloud- 
berries— in  which  we  were  joined  by  two  pleasant 


-- -^    % 


THRONDTJEM    FYORD. 


young  ladies  and  their  father,  an  old  gentleman 
smoking  an  enormous  long  pipe,  who  turned  out  to 
be  the  Bishop  of  Christiansand.  The  house  of  the 
landamann  of  Hitterdal  contains  a  relic  connected 
with  a  picturesque  story  quaintly  illustrative  of  an- 
cient Scandinavian  life.  It  is  an  axe,  with  a  handle 
projecting  beyond  the  blade,  and  curved,  so  that 
it    can   be   used    as    a   walking-stick.       Formerly   it 


n6  IN  NORWAY. 

belonged  to  an  ancient  descendant  of  the  Kongen,  or 
chieftains  of  the  district,  who  insisted  upon  carrying 
it  to  church  with  him  in  accordance  with  an  old  privi- 
lege. The  priest  forbade  the  bearing  of  the  warlike 
weapon  into  church,  which  so  much  affected  the  old 
man  that  he  died.  His  son,  who  thought  it  necessary 
to  avenge  his  father's  death,  went  to  the  priest  with 
the  axe  in  his  hands,  and  demanded  the  most  precious 
thing  he  possessed — when  the  priest  brought  his  Bible 
and  gave  it  to  him  opened  upon  a  passage  exhorting  to 
forgiveness  of  injuries. 

On  July  25  we  left  Kristiania  for  Throndtjem — 
the  whole  journey  of  three  hundred  and  sixty  miles 
being  very  comfortable,  and  only  costing  30  francs. 
The  route  has  no  great  beauty,  but  endless  pleasant 
variety — rail  to  Eidswold,  with  bilberries  and  straw- 
berries in  pretty  birch-bark  baskets  for  sale  at  all  the 
railway  stations  ;  a  vibrating  steamer  for  several  hours 
on  the  long,  dull  Miosen  lake  ;  railway  again,  with 
some  of  the  carriages  open  at  the  sides  ;  then  an 
obligatory  night  at  Koppang,  a  large  station,  where 
accommodation  is  provided  for  every  one,  but  where,  if 
there  are  many  passengers,  several  people,  strangers 
to  each  other,  are  expected  to  share  the  same  room. 
On  the  second  day  the  scenery  improves,  the  railway 
sometimes  running  along  and  sometimes  over  the  river 


THRONDTJEM. 


117 


Glommen,  on  a  wooden  causeway,  till  the  gorge  of 
mountains  opens  beyond  Storen,  into  a  rich  country 
with  turfy  mounds  constantly  reminding  us  of  the 
graves  of  the  hero-gods  of  Upsala.  Towards  sunset, 
beyond  the  deep  cleft  in  which  the  river  Nid  runs 
between  lines  of  old  painted  wooden  warehouses,  rises 


THRONDTJEM   CATHEDRAL. 


the  burial-place  of  S.  Olaf,  the  shrine  of  Scandina- 
vian Christianity,  the  stumpy-towered  cathedral  of 
Throndtjem.  The  most  northern  railway  station  and 
the  most  northern  cathedral  in  Europe  ! 

Surely  the  cradle  of  Scandinavian  Christianity  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  places  in  the  world  !  No 
one  had  ever  told  us  about  it,  and  we  went  there  only 
because  it  is  the  old  Throndtjem  of  sagas  and  ballads, 


n8  IN  NORWAY, 

and  expecting  a  wonderful  and  beautiful  cathedral. 
But  the  whole  place  is  a  dream  of  loveliness,  so  ex- 
quisite in  the  soft  silvery  morning  light  on  the  fyord 
and  delicate  mountain  ranges,  the  rich  nearer  hills 
covered  with  bilberries  and  breaking  into  steep  cliffs 
— that  one  remains  in  a  state  of  transport,  which  is 
at  a  climax  while  all  is  engraven  upon  an  opal  sun- 
set sky,  when  an  amethystine  glow  spreads  over  the 
mountains,  and  when  ships  and  buildings  meet  their 
double  in  the  still,  transparent  water.  Each  wide 
street  of  curious  low  wooden  houses  displays  a  new 
vista  of  sea,  of  rocky  promontories,  of  woods  dipping 
into  the  water  ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  principal  street 
is  the  gray  massive  cathedral  where  S.  Olaf  is  buried, 
and  where  northern  art  and  poetry  have  exhausted 
their  loveliest  and  most  pathetic  fancies  around  the 
grave  of  the  national  hero. 

The  '  Cathedral  Garden/  for  so  the  graveyard  is 
called,  is  most  touching.  Acres  upon  acres  of  graves 
are  all  kept — not  by  officials,  but  by  the  families  they 
belong  to — like  gardens.  The  tombs  are  embowered 
in  roses  and  honeysuckle,  and  each  little  green  mound 
has  its  own  vase  for  cut  flowers  daily  replenished,  and 
a  seat  for  the  survivors,  which  is  daily  occupied,  so 
that  the  link  between  the  dead  and  the  living  is  never 
broken. 


THROND  TJEM.  1 1 9 

Christianity  was  first  established  in  Norway  at 
the  end  of  the  tenth  century  by  King  Olaf  Trygveson, 
son  of  Trygve  and  of  the  lady  Astrida,  whose  ro- 
mantic adventures,  when  sold  as  a  slave  after  her 
husband's  death,  are  the  subject  of  a  thousand  stories. 
When  Olaf  succeeded  to  the  throne  of  Norway  after 
the  death  of  Hako,  son  of  Sigurd,  in  996,  he 
proclaimed  Christianity  throughout  his  dominions, 
heard  matins  daily  himself,  and  sent  out  missionaries 
through  his  dominions.  But  the  duty  of  the  so- 
called  missionaries  had  little  to  do  with  teaching,  they 
were  only  required  to  baptize.  All  who  refused  bap- 
tism were  tortured  and  put  to  death.  When,  at  one 
time,  the  estates  of  the  province  of  Throndtjem  tried 
to  force  Olaf  back  to  the  old  religion,  he  outwardly 
assented,  but  made  the  condition  that  the  offended 
pagan  deities  should  in  that  case  be  appeased  by 
human  sacrifice — the  sacrifice  of  the  twelve  nobles 
who  were  most  urgent  in  compelling  him  ;  and  upon 
this  the  ardour  of  the  chieftains  for  paganism  was 
cooled,  and  they  allowed  Olaf  unhindered  to  demolish 
the  great  statue  of  Thor,  covered  with  gold  and 
jewels,  in  the  centre  of  the  province  of  Throndtjem, 
where  he  founded  the  city  then  called  Nidaros,  upon 
the  river  Nid. 

No  end  of  stories  are  narrated  of  the  cruelties  of 


120  IN  NORWAY, 

Olaf  Trygveson.  When  Egwind,  a  northern  chief- 
tain, refused  to  abandon  his  idols,  he  first  attempted 
to  bribe  him,  but,  when  gentler  means  failed,  a  chafing- 
dish  of  hot  coals  was  placed  upon  his  belly  till  he  • 
died.  Raude  the  magician  had  a  more  horrible  fate  : 
an  adder  was  forced  down  a  horn  into  his  stomach, 
and  left  to  eat  its  way  out  again ! 

The  first  Christian  king  of  Norway  was  an  habit- 
ual drunkard,  and,  by  twofold  adultery,  he,  the 
husband  of  Godruna,  married  Thyra  of  Denmark, 
the  wife  of  Duke  Borislaf  of  Pomerania.  This  led 
to  a  war  with  Denmark  and  Sweden,  whose  united 
fleets  surrounded  him  near  Stralsund.  As  much 
mystery  enshrouds  the  story  of  his  death  as  is  con- 
nected with  that  of  Arthur,  Barbarossa,  or  Harold : 
as  his  royal  vessel,  the  Long  Serpent,  was  boarded  by 
the  enemy,  he  plunged  into  the  sea  and  was  no  more 
seen,  though  some  chroniclers  say  that  he  swam  to 
the  shore  in  safety  and  died  afterwards  at  Rome, 
whither  he  went  on  pilgrimage. 

Olaf  Trygveson  had  a  godson  Olaf,  son  of  Harald 
Grenske  and  Asta,  who  had  the  nominal  title  of  king 
given  to  all  sea  captains  of  royal  descent.  From  his 
twelfth  year,  Olaf  Haraldsen  was  a  pirate,  and  he 
headed  the  band  of  Danes  who  destroyed  Canterbury 
and  murdered  S.  Elphege — a  strange  feature  in  the 


THRONDTJEM.  121 

life  of  one  who  has  been  himself  regarded  as  a  saint 
since  his  death.  By  one  of  the  strange  freaks  of 
fortune  common  in  those  times,  this  Olaf  Haraldsen 
gained  a  great  victory  over  the  chieftain  Sweyn,  who 
then  ruled  at  Nidaros,  and,  chiefly  through  the  in- 
fluence of  Sigurd  Syr,  a  great  northern  landowner 
who  had  become  the  second  husband  of  his  mother, 
he  became  seated  in  1016  upon  the  throne  of  Norway. 
His  first  care  was  for  the  restoration  of  Christianity, 
which  had  fallen  into  decadence  in  the  sixteen  years 
which  had  elapsed  since  the  defeat  of  Olaf  Trygveson. 
The  second  Olaf  imitated  the  violence  and  cruelty 
of  his  predecessor.  Whenever  the  new  religion  was 
rejected,  he  beheaded  or  hung  the  delinquents.  In 
his  most  merciful  moments  he  mutilated  and  blinded 
them :  \  he  did  not  spare  one  who  refused  to  serve 
God.*  After  fourteen  years  of  unparalleled  cruelties  in 
the  name  of  religion,  he  fell  in  battle  with  Canute  the 
Great  at  Sticklestadt.  He  had  abducted  and  married 
Astrida,  daughter  of  the  King  of  Sweden,  but  by  her 
he  had  no  children.  By  his  concubine  Alfhilda  he 
left  an  only  son,  who  lived  to  become  Magnus  the 
Good,  King  of  Norway.  There  is  a  very  fine  story  of 
the  way  in  which  Magnus  obtained  his  name.  Olaf 
had  said, ( I  very  seldom  sleep,  and  if  I  ever  do  it  will 
be  the  worse  for  any  one  who  awakens  me.'     Whilst 


122  IN  NORWAY. 

he  was  asleep  Alfhilda's  child  was  born.  Then  the 
King's  scald  or  poet  and  Siegfried  the  mass  priest 
debated  together  as  to  whether  they  should  awaken 
him.  At  first  they  thought  they  would  ;  then  the  poet 
said,  '  No  ;  I  know  him  better  than  that :  he  must  not 
be  awakened/  '  That  is  all  very  well/  said  the  priest, 
1  but  the  child  must  be  baptised  at  once.  What  shall 
we  call  him  ?  '  l  Oh/  said  the  scald,  i  I  know  that  the 
King  said  that  the  child  should  be  named  after  the 
greatest  monarch  that  ever  lived,  and  his  name  was 
Magnus/  for  he  only  remembered  one  part  of  the 
name.     So  they  called  him  Magnus. 

When  the  King  woke  up  he  was  furious.  '  Who 
can  have  dared  to  do  this  thing — to  christen  the  child 
without  consulting  me,  and  to  give  him  this  out- 
landish name,  which  is  no  name  at  all — who  can  have 
dared  to  do  it  ?  * 

Then  the  mass  priest  was  terrified  and  shrank  into 
his  shoes,  but  the  scald  answered  boldly,  '  I  did  it, 
and  I  did  it  because  it  was  better  to  send  two  souls 
to  God  than  one  soul  to  the  devil ;  for  if  the  child 
had  died  unbaptised  it  would  have  been  lost,  but  if 
you  kill  Siegfried  and  me  we  shall  go  straight  to 
heaven/ 

And  then  King  Olaf  thought  he  would  say  no 
more  about  it. 


THRONDTJEM.  123 

However  terrible  the  cruelties  of  Olaf  Haraldsen 
were  in  his  lifetime,  they  were  soon  dazzled  out  of 
sight  amid  the  halo  of  miracles  with  which  his 
memory  was  encircled  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  It  was  only  recollected  that  when,  accord- 
ing to  the  legend,  he  raced  for  the  kingdom  with  his 
half-brother  Harald,  in  his  good  ship  the  Ox, 

Saint  Olaf,  who  on  God  relied, 

Three  days  the  first  his  house  descried ; 

after  which 

Harald  so  fierce  with  anger  burned 
He  to  a  lothely  dragon  turned  ; 

but  because 

A  pious  zeal  Saint  Olaf  bore, 

He  long  the  crown  of  Norway  wore. 

His  admirers  narrated  that  when  he  was  ab- 
sently cutting  chips  from  a  stick  with  his  knife  on 
a  Sunday,  a  servant  passed  him  with  the  reproof, 
'  Sir,  it  is  Monday  to-morrow,'  when  he  placed  the 
sinful  chips  in  his  hand,  and,  setting  them  on  fire, 
bore  the  pain  till  they  were  all  consumed.  It  was 
remembered  that  as  he  walked  to  the  church  which 
Olaf  Trygveson  had  founded  at  Nidaros,  he  '  wore  a 
glory  in  his  yellow  hair.'  And  gradually  he  became 
the  most  popular  saint  of  Scandinavia.  His  shirt  was 
an  object  of  pilgrimage  in  the  Church  of  S.  Victor 


124  IN  NORWAY. 

at  Paris,  and  many  churches  were  dedicated  to  him 
in  England,  and  especially  in  London,  where  Tooley 
Street  still  records  his  familiar  appellation  of  S. 
Tooley. 

It  was  when  the  devotion  to  S.  Olaf  was  just 
beginning  that  Earl  Godwin  and  his  sons  were 
banished  from  England  for  a  time.  Two  of  these, 
Harold  and  Tosti,  became  vikings,  and,  in  a  great 
battle,  they  vowed  that,  if  they  were  victorious,  they 
would  give  half  the  spoil  to  the  shrine  of  S.  Olaf ; 
and  a  huge  silver  statue,  which  they  actually  gave, 
existed  at  Throndtjem  till  1500,  and  if  it  existed 
still  would  be  one  of  the  most  important  relics  in 
archaeology.  The  old  Kings  of  Norway  used  to  dig 
up  the  saint  from  time  to  time  and  cut  his  nails. 
When  Harold  Hardrada  was  going  to  England,  he 
declared  that  he  must  see  S.  Olaf  once  again.  '  I 
must  see  my  brother  once  more/  he  said,  and  he  also 
cut  the  saint's  nails.  But  he  also  thought  that  from 
that  time  it  would  be  better  that  no  one  should  see 
his  brother  any  more — it  would  not  be  for  the  good 
of  the  Church — so  he  took  the  keys  of  the  shrine 
and  threw  them  into  the  fyord ;  at  the  same  time, 
however,  he  said  it  would  be  good  for  men  in  after- 
ages  to  know  what  a  great  king  was  like,  so  he 
caused  S.  Olaf's  measure  to  be  engraved  upon  the 


THRONDTJEM. 


125 


wall   in  the  church  at   Throndtjem — his  measure  of 
seven  feet — and  there  it  is  still. 

Around    the  shrine  of    Olaf    in  Throndtjem,  in 
which,  in  spite  of  Harold    Hardrada,  his  '  incorrupt 


S.  OLAF'S  WELL. 


body '  was  seen  more  than  five  hundred  years  after 
his  death,  has  arisen  the  most  beautiful  of  northern 
cathedrals,  originating  in  a  small  chapel  built  over 
his   grave   within   ten  years   after   his   death.     The 


i26  IN  NORWAY, 

exquisite  colour  of  its  green-grey  stone  adds  greatly 
to  the  general  effect  of  the  interior,  and  to  the 
delicate  sculpture  of  its  interlacing  arches.  From 
the  ambulatory  behind  the  choir  opens  a  tiny 
chamber  containing  the  Well  of  S.  Olaf,  of  rugged 
yellow  stone,  with  the  holes  remaining  in  the  pave- 
ment through  which  the  dripping  water  ran  away 
when  the  buckets  were  set  down.  Amongst  the 
many  famous  Bishops  of  Throndtjem,  perhaps  the 
most  celebrated  has  been  Anders  Arrebo,  '  the  father 
of  Danish  poetry*  (i 587—1637),  who  wrote  the 
1  Hexameron/  an  extraordinarily  long  poem  on  the 
Creation,  which  nobody  reads  now.  The  cathedral 
is  given  up  to  Lutheran  worship,  but  its  ancient  relics 
are  kindly  tended  and  cared  for,  and  the  building 
is  being  beautifully  restored.  Its  beautiful  Chapter 
House  is  lent  for  English  service  on  Sundays. 

In  the  wide  street  which  leads  from  the  sea  to 
the  cathedral  is  the  '  Coronation  House,'  the  wooden 
palace  in  which  the  Kings  and  Queens  of  Sweden  and 
Norway  stay  when  they  come  hither  to  be  crowned. 
Hither  the  present  beloved  Queen,  Sophie  of  Nassau, 
came  in  1873,  driving  herself  in  her  own  carriole  from 
the  Romsdal,  in  graceful  compliance  with  the  popular 
mode  of  Norwegian  travel.  It  is  because  even  the 
finest   buildings   in   Norway  are    generally   built   of 


THROND  TJEM.  1 2  7 

wood  that  there  are  so  few  of  any  real  antiquity. 
Near  the  shore  of  the  fyord,  the  custom-house  occu- 
pies the  site  of  the  Orething,  where  the  elections  of 
twenty  kings  have  taken  place.  It  is  sacred  ground 
to  a  King  of  Norway,  who  passes  it  bareheaded. 
The  familiar  affection  with  which  the  Norwegians 
regard  their  sovereigns  can  scarcely  be  compre- 
hended in  any  other  country.  To  their  people  they 
are  '  the  father  and  mother  of  the  land/  The  broken 
Norse  is  remembered  at  Throndtjem  in  which  King 
Carl  Johann  begged  people  '  to  make  room  for  their 
old  father '  when  they  pressed  too  closely  upon 
him.  When  the  present  so  beloved  Queen  drove 
herself  to  her  coronation,  the  people  met  her  with 
flowers  at  all  the  '  stations  '  where  the  horses  were 
changed.  '  Are  you  the  mother  of  the  land  ? ' 
they  said.  '  You  look  nice,  but  you  must  do  more 
than  look  nice  ;  that  is  not  the  essential.'  One  old 
woman  begged  the  lady  in  waiting  to  beg  her 
majesty  to  get  upon  the  roof  of  the  house.  '  Then 
we  should  all  see  her. '  At  Throndtjem  the  peasants 
touchingly  and  affectionately  always  addressed  her 
as  '  Du.' 

In  returning  from  Throndtjem  we  left  the  railway 
at  Storen,  where  we  engaged  a  double  carriole,  and  a 
carriage  for  four  with  a  pleasant  boy  called   Johann 


128  .     IN  NORWAY. 

as  its  driver,  for  the  return  journey.  It  was  difficult 
to  obtain  definite  information  about  anything,  English 
books  being  almost  useless  from  their  incorrectness, 
and  we  set  off  with  a  sort  of  sense  of  exploring  an 
unknown  country.  At  every  '  station  '  we  changed 
horses,  which  were  sent  back  by  the  boy,  who  perched 
upon  the  luggage  behind,  and  we  marked  our  dis- 
tances by  calling  our  horses  after  the  Kings  of 
England.  Thus,  setting  off  from  Storen  with  William 
the  Conqueror,  we  drove  into  the  Ramsdal  with 
Edward  VI.  After  a  drive  with  Lady  Jane  Grey,  we 
set  off  again  with  Mary.  But  the  Kings  of  England 
failed  us  long  before  our  driving  days  were  over,  and 
we  used  up  all  the  Kings  of  Rome  also.  As  we  were 
coming  down  a  steep  hill  into  Lillehammer  with 
Tarquinius  Superbus,  something  gave  way  and  he 
quietly  walked  out  of  the  harness,  leaving  us  to  run 
briskly  down-hill  and  subside  into  the  hedge.  We 
captured  Tarquinius,  but  how  to  put  him  in  again 
was  a  mystery,  as  we  had  never  harnessed  a  horse 
before.  However,  by  trying  every  strap  in  turn  we 
got  him  in  somehow,  and  escaped  the  fate  of  Red 
Riding  Hood  amid  the  lonely  hills. 

For  a  great  distance  after  leaving  Storen  there  is 
little  especially  striking  in  the  scenery,  except  one 
gorge    of   old   weird    pine-trees   in  a  rift    of   purple 


THE  DO  FEE  EYELD.  129 

mountains.  After  you  emerge  upon  the  high  Dovre- 
Fyeld,  the  huge  ranges  of  Sneehatten  rise  snowy, 
gleaming,  and  glorious,  above  the  wide  yellow-grey 
expanse,  hoary  with  reindeer  moss,  though,  as  the 
Dovre-Fyeld  is  itself  three  thousand  feet  high,  and 
Sneehatten  only  seven  thousand  three  hundred,  it 
does  not  look  so  high  as  it  really  is.  Next  to 
Throndtjem  itself,  the  old  ballads  and  songs  of 
Norway  gather  most  thickly  around  the  Dovre- 
Fyeld.  It  is  here  that  the  witches  are  supposed  to 
hold  their  secret  meetings  at  their  Blokulla,  or  black 
hill.  Across  these  yellow  hills  of  the  Jerkin-Fyeld 
the  prose  Edda  describes  Thor  striding  to  his  conflict 
with  the  dragon  Jormangandur  '  by  Sneehatten's  peak 
of  snow,'  where  '  the  tall  pines  cracked  like  a  field  of 
stubble  under  his  feet ; '  and  here,  according  to  the 
ancient  fragment  called  the  ballad  of  l  The  Twelve 
Wizards/  as  given  in  Prior's  'Ancient  Danish 
Ballads ' — 

At  Dovrefeld,  over  on  Norway's  reef, 
Were  heroes  who  never  knew  pain  or  grief. 

There  dwelt  there  many  a  warrior  keen, 
The  twelve  bold  brothers  of  Ingeborg  queen. 

The  first  with  his  hand  the  storm  could  hush 
The  second  could  stop  the  torrent's  rush. 


13©  IN  NORWAY, 

The  third  could  dive  in  the  sea  as  a  fish  ; 
The  fourth  never  wanted  meat  on  dish. 

The  fifth  he  would  strike  the  golden  lyre, 
And  young  and  old  to  the  dancing  fire. 

The  sixth  on  the  horn  would  blow  a  blast, 
Who  heard  it  would  shudder  and  stand  aghast. 

The  seventh  go  under  the  earth  could  he  ; 
The  eighth  he  could  dance  on  the  rolling  sea. 

The  ninth  tamed  all  that  in  greenwood  crept  ; 
The  tenth  not  a  nap  had  ever  slept. 

The  eleventh  the  grisly  lindworm  bound, 
And  will  what  he  would,  the  means  he  found. 

The  twelfth  he  could  all  things  understand, 
Though  done  in  a  nook  of  the  farthest  land. 

Their  equals  were  never  seen  there  in  the  North, 
Nor  anywhere  else  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

In  spite  of  great  fatigue  from  the  distances  to  be 
accomplished,  each  day's  journey  in  carriage  or  car- 
riole has  its  peculiar  charms,  the  going  on  and  on 
into  an  unknown  land,  meeting  no  one,  sleeping  in 
odd,  primitive,  but  always  clean  rooms,  setting  off 
again  at  half-past  five  or  six,  and  halting  at  comfort- 
able stations,  with  their  ever-moderate  prices  and 
their  cheery  farm-servants,  who  kissed   our  hands  all 


NORWEGIAN  STATIONS.  131 

round  on  receiving  the  very  smallest  gratuity — a 
coin  meaning  twopence-halfpenny  being  a  source  of 
ecstatic  bliss. 

The  '  bonders/  who  keep  the  stations,  generally 
themselves  represent  the  gentry  of  the  country,  the 
real  gentry  filling  the  position  of  the  English  aristo- 
cracy. The  bonders  are  generally  very  well  off, 
having  small  tithes,  good  houses,  boundless  fuel,  a 
great  variety  of  food,  and  continual  change  of  labour 
on  their  own  small  properties.  Their  wives,  who 
never  walk,  have  a  sledge  for  winter,  and  a  carriole 
and  horse  to  take  them  to  church  in  summer.  In 
the  many  months  of  snow,  when  the  cows  and  horses 
are  all  stabled  in  the  '  laave,'  and  when  out-of-door 
occupations  fail,  they  occupy  the  time  with  household 
pursuits — carpentering,  tailoring,  or  brewing.  When 
a  bonder  dies,  his  wife  succeeds  to  his  property  until 
her  second  marriage ;  then  it  is  divided  amongst  his 
children. 

The  \  stations '  or  farmhouses  are  almost  entirely 
built  of  wood,  but  those  of  a  superior  class  have  a 
single  room  of  stone,  used  only  in  bridals  or  births,  a 
custom  handed  down  from  old  times  when  a  place  of 
special  safety  was  required  at  those  seasons. 

Nine-tenths  of  the  country  are  covered  with  pine- 
forests,  but  the  trees  are  always  cut  down  before  they 


132  .  IN  NORWAY, 

grow  old.  We  did  not  see  a  single  old  tree  in 
Norway.  The  pines  are  of  two  kinds  only— -the 
Furu,  our  pine,  Pinus  silvestris ;  and  the  Gran,  our 
fir,  Pinus  abies. 

Wolves  seldom  appear  except  in  winter,  when 
those  who  travel  in  sledges  are  often  pursued  by  them. 
Then  hunger  makes  them  so  bold  that  they  will  often 
snatch  a  dog  from  between  the  knees  of  a  driver. 

From  the  station  of  Dombaas  (where  there  is  a 
telegraph  station  and  a  shop  of  old  silver)  we  .turned 
aside  down  the  Romsdal,  which  soon  became  beautiful, 
as  the  road  wound  above  the  chrysoprase  river  Rauma, 
broken  by  many  rocky  islets  and  swirling  into  many 
waterfalls,  but  always  equally  radiant,  equally  trans- 
parent, till  its  colour  is  washed  out  by  the  melting 
snow  in  a  ghastly  narrow  valley,  which  we  called  the 
Valley  of  Death. 

The  little  inn  at  Aak,  in  Romsdal,  with  a  large 
garden  stretching  along  the  hillside,  disappointed  us 
at  first,  as  the  clouds  hid  the  mountain  tops,  but 
morning  revealed  how  glorious  they  are  —  purple 
pinnacles  of  rock  or  pathless  fields  of  snow  embossed 
upon  a  sky  which  is  delicately  blue  above  but  melts 
into  the  clearest  opal.  Grander,  we  thought,  than 
any  single  peak  in  Switzerland  is  the  tremendous 
peak   of   the    Romsdalhorn,    and    the    wralks   in  all 


ROMSDAL. 


133 


directions  are  most  exquisite — into  deep  glades  filled 
with  columbines  and  the  giant  larkspurs,  which  are 
such  a  feature  of  Norway  :  into  tremendous  mountain 
gorges  :  or  to  Waeblungsnaes,  along  the  banks  of  the 
lovely  fyord,  with  its  marvellously  quaint  forms  of 
mountain  distance.     Aak  is  a  place  where  a  month 


IN  THE   ROMSDAL,    NORWAY. 


may  be  spent  most  delightfully,  as  well  as  most  com- 
fortably and  economically. 

We  had  heard  a  great  deal  before  we  went  to 
Norway  about  the  difficulty  of  getting  proper  food, 
but  our  own  experience  is  that  we  were  never  fed 
more  luxuriously.     Perhaps  very  late  in  the  season 


i34  IN  NORWAY. 

the  provisions  at  the  country  t  stations  '  may  be  some- 
what used  up,  but  when  we  were  there  in  July  only 
those  who  could  not  live  without  a  great  deal  of  meat 
could  have  any  cause  for  complaint,  and  once  a  week 
we  generally  had  reindeer  for  a  treat.  When  we 
arrived  in  the  evenings,  we  always  found  an  excellent 
meal  prepared — the  most  delicious  coffee,  tea,  and 
cream  ;  baskets  of  bread,  rusks,  cakes  and  biscuits  of 
various  descriptions  ;  fresh  salmon  and  trout ;  cloud- 
berries, bilberries,  raspberries,  mountain  strawberries 
and  cream  ;  and  for  all  this  about  a  franc  and  a  half 
is  the  payment  required. 

My  companions  lingered  at  Kristiania  whilst  I 
paid  a  visit,  which  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  rec- 
ollections of  my  tour,  to  a  native  family  near  Moss, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  fyord  ;  then  we  came  back  to 
Denmark,  travelling  in  the  same  train  with  the  beloved 
Prince  Imperial,  who  was  then  in  the  height  of  health 
and  happiness,  and  received  at  every  station  with  the 
enthusiastic  '  Hochs  ! '  which  in  Scandinavia  supply 
the  place  of  the  English  hurrah. 


I'D  21-ioom-8,'34 


I  U       >U\J^>K~>   / 


, 


